title: Noah's Compass
author:  Anne Tyler 
description: Starred Review. Like Tyler's previous protagonists, Liam Pennywell is a man of unexceptional talents, plain demeanor, modest means and curtailed ambition. At age 60, he's been fired from his teaching job at a second-rate private boys' school in Baltimore, a job below his academic training and original expectations. An unsentimental, noncontemplative survivor of two failed marriages and the emotionally detached father of three grown daughters, Liam is jolted into alarm after he's attacked in his apartment and loses all memory of the experience. His search to recover those lost hours leads him into an uneasy exploration of his disappointing life and into an unlikely new relationship with Eunice, a socially inept walking fashion disaster who is half his age. She is also spontaneous and enthusiastic, and Liam longs to cast off his inertia and embrace the joyous recklessness that he feels in her company. Tyler's gift is to make the reader empathize with this flawed but decent man, and to marvel at how this determinedly low-key, plainspoken novelist achieves miracles of insight and understanding. <i>(Jan.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](index-1_1.jpg)
  
  
  Noah’s Compass: A Novel
  
  
  Noah’s Compass: A Novel
  
  
  Noah’s Compass: A Novel
  
  # ALSO BY ANNE TYLER
  
  
  Digging to America
  
  
  The Amateur Marriage
  
  
  Back When We Were Grownups
  
  
  A Patchwork Planet
  
  
  Ladder of Years
  
  
  Saint Maybe
  
  
  Breathing Lessons
  
  
  The Accidental Tourist
  
  
  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
  
  
  Morgan’s Passing
  
  
  Earthly Possessions
  
  
  Searching for Caleb
  
  
  Celestial Navigation
  
  
  The Clock Winder
  
  
  A Slipping-Down Life
  
  
  The Tin Can Tree
  
  
  If Morning Ever Comes
  
  
  Noah’s Compass: A Novel
  
  
  Noah’s Compass: A Novel
  
  
  1
  
  
  In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job.
  
  
  It wasn’t such a good job, anyhow. He’d been teaching fifth grade in a second-
  rate private
  
  
  boys’ school. Fifth grade wasn’t even what he’d been trained for. Teaching
  wasn’t what he’d
  
  
  been trained for. His degree was in philosophy. Oh, don’t ask. Things seemed
  to have taken a
  
  
  downward turn a long, long time ago, and perhaps it was just as well that he
  had s