First of all, I'm a HUGE Anne Tyler fan. To my mind, she can do no wrong. Reading one of her books is like curling up on the couch in a baggy cashmere sweater. That said, this is definitely not one of her strongest. She doesn't develop the characters in any particularly complex way and it's really hard to step into their shoes. Usually her portrayals of families are so hauntingly real, it's almost uncomfortable to read about them, but here it read like the "setting the scene" for a family drama on Lifetime. Held up next to Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, which deals with similar themes, Digging to America doesn't gain any traction at all.

به عنوان يه ايرانى خيلى جالب بود كه يه خانوم نويسنده آمريكايى انقد مسلط به فرهنگ ايران كتابى با مضمون مهاجرت بنويسه؛اين كتاب راجع به معلق بودن و تعلق نداشتن به كشور دومه،معلق بودنى كه حتى رو عاشق بودن آدم ها تاثير ميذاره،
كتاب رو دوست داشتم هرچند پايانش كه كمى آمريكايى طور
تموم شد رو نپسنديدم
با ذكر اين نكته كه همسر نويسنده يك پزشك ايرانى و نويسنده سرشناسى به اسم تقى مدرسى بودند وعلت آشنايى نويسنده با فرهنگ ايرانى اينه.

Två helt olika familjer som knyts samman på grund av att båda hämtar sina adoptivdöttrar från samma plan. Mycket om kulturell bakgrund, om den vi känner till och vill ge vidare och om den som andra ser hos oss. Det är ett intressant drag av Anne Tyler att ge den ena familjen iransk bakgrund och ett ännu intressantare drag att låta berättarturen gå från den ena till den andra så att man under åren som går i berättelsen får se personerna genom olika ögon.
Det här är första gången jag läser något av Anne Tyler, och romanen känns välskriven – men får mig av någon anledning inte att bli lyrisk.

Don’t you hate it when you pick up a book and realize when you start to read it you already have! Picked this up in the farmers market in Jaco, sat down to read it and thought, this very familiar lol! Read it anyways cuz I couldn’t remember all of it, and enjoyed it a second time. Do like her writing

My friend is much kinder in her review of this book than I plan on being. I did not relate to any one character in the book and as the book's main theme relates to my own current life experience I found it unrealistic. I would not recommend this book.

В моих списках много книгах об эмигрантах, или написанных эмигрантами и их потомками. "Удочеряя Америку" - эдакий будничный гимн тому, как живут люди, усыновившие детей из других стран. Две семьи с различным культурным бекграундом (американцы и иранцы) встречают в аэропорту двух малышек из Кореи. Они выбирают отличные друг от друга пути их воспитания, но по необъяснимым в целом причинам поддерживают общение - со всеми вытекающими трудностями.
Светлая жизненная история, непритязательно и обо всем сразу - конфликты поколений, соседей, непринятие социумом "других" - даже в Америке, но все это так мягко, без особо острых углов, как всегда у Энн Тайлер, мне кажется. Она так пишет книги, будто заправляя ручку вишневым сиропом.

3 из 5

2.75

Read this for class. Not bad - I liked the relationships between parents and children, as well as between different family members, they all felt very real. But I took a whole star off for PUNCTUATION GODDAMNIT

In no way socks-or-mind blowing, but still has a quiet resonance -- it's essentially a love story between an elderly Iranian woman who's immigrated to the States and an elderly American man. Tyler works into this her usual flair for dialogue, layers in cultural nuances, dissonances, within both the Iranian and American communities, especially pertinent after Sept. 11, and sets it against the backdrop of the adoption of two Korean girls by two different families (one Iranian, of course, and the other AMerican). By far the best thing about this book (not just the zippy read it is) are the characters -- they are real, multifaceted, weak, good-hearted, prejudiced, too liberal and guilt-ridden, everything all at once. What I found lacking (also a bit of a red herring, for me) is that the story really has nothing much to do with the adoption of two Korean girls -- although the book cover pix might mislead you, as well as the book blurb. It's written from multiple POVs, and we get the POV of one of the Korean girls at age five or something-- but it's (1) not quite believable and (2) it's one of the weaker chapters (although it does have this incredibly humorous episode of one mother sending fifty "pacifiers" tied to helium balloons up into the sky (now, though a parent of two little ones myself, I find writing about the tedious nature of parenting unbelievably hard to read, going through it myself) so I appreciated that Tyler could do it with such panache and humor.)

The title of this book comes from this question: if children in the U.S. dig a hole to China, are children in China digging to America? This seems to be a metaphor for the question of whether perhaps we're all, even the most American-seeming American, digging to America, or trying to figure out what it means to be American.

When the Donaldson (American through-and-through) and the Yazdans (Iranian-American) adopt baby girls from Korea on the same day, the families become the best of friends. It is no surprise, perhaps, that the Donaldsons opt to keep their baby's Korean name and put lots of emphasis on her Korean heritage, whereas the Yazdans Americanize their daughter's name, and generally raise her as an American.

Unpredictably, it seems that the Donaldsons look as much to the Yazdans for clues about raising their daughter as the other way around. Which is what this book is really about, I think. It's not about being American. it's about creating a family.

‘Like most life-altering moments, it was disappointingly lacking in drama’, writes Anne Tyler describing, well, a life-changing event, but she might as well have been describing her way of writing those moments, only they aren’t disappointing. Quite the opposite, in my opinion.

In Digging to America, she is back at her usual tropes of little towns, interconnected families and living from one day to the next, but she also ventures into newer themes, international adoption, immigrant living and a sizable post 9/11 discourse. The book feels like one big festivity after another, a few gatherings and then a few parties, all in celebration of homecomings, birthdays, even pacifier-leavings and leaf rakings.

The lives of two poles-apart families, one Iranian-American and one pure-bred American, are forever entwined as they meet at the airport to collect their adopted Korean babies. The plot meanders through the clash of the foreign and the familiar in every aspect of their everyday existence. Everyone’s reconfiguring their lives as new parents and grandparents, but looking at the larger whole, everyone’s reconfiguring their lives to varying degrees of Americanism. Tyler goes down to the roots of belonging, explores the ever-changing definition of home, and concludes with the idea that we’re all outsiders, if not of place, then of privilege or power or any number of things. In Tyler’s version of the world, real as the one we live in, she carves a place for each outsider with the help of another, different kind of outsider. It’s all about resisting, resenting, and warming up to other people, because after all that makes us different, there’s more that binds us with each other.

I feel like I choose an Anne Tyler book for those opportune days that, when looked back upon, I need her the most. Is that what they call a ‘kismet connection’? I feel it is. 3.5 stars!

Great book! Several passages really resonated with me. Agree that it is tiring to always be the foreigner.

Anne Tyler loves to write about families and the interactions between people. Mostly, the misunderstandings and missed communications that are part of all relationships, in particular in families.

In this book two families meet at the airport where they have arrived to greet their new adopted daughters from Korea. One family is Iranian, the other Bitsy and Dave Donaldson, very American. They and their daughters become close friends, with love and misunderstanding. That's all I'll say about the plot. You should read it to enjoy it. Lots of fun, some tension, some sadness too.

I was afraid it may turn out like her Saint Maybe, but it is a different book. She is a wizard at description and a good writer. You most likely will enjoy meeting the Donaldsons and the Yazdans.