Ladder of Years, by Anne Tyler

I read this book in October 2016, and now, in September 2018, I remember nothing of it. Decades ago, a novelist told me that Anne Tyler was one of the authors she most admired. I was in my twenties then and she in her late fifties, so I assumed her opinion was golden. I've read a few of Tyler's books in the years since then, and while I enjoy them, I find them completely forgettable.

Here's the synopsis of Ladder of Years:  BALTIMORE WOMAN DISAPPEARS DURING FAMILY VACATION, declares the headline. Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead is last seen strolling down the Delaware shore, wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and carrying a beach tote with five hundred dollars tucked inside. To her husband and three almost-grown children, she has vanished without trace or reason. But for Delia, who feels like a tiny gnat buzzing around her family's edges, "walking away from it all" is not a premeditated act, but an impulse that will lead her into a new, exciting, and unimagined life . . . .

I did a bit of a walk-away in my early forties. I sold nearly everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Turkey. After a year there, I wandered east to Malaysia, then a tad northeast to Cambodia. Fifteen years later, I've never returned to the US. Believe me, I like stories about women who "walk away from it all"!

In Delia's case, what I found most tragicomic were the descriptions of her that her family provided the police when they finally, and very belatedly, realized that she was in fact missing.

A slender, small-boned woman with curly fair or light-brown hair, Mrs. Grinstead stands 5'2" or possibly 5'5" and weighs either 90 or 110 pounds. Her eyes are blue or gray or perhaps green, and her nose is mildly sunburned in addition to being freckled...

Presumably she was carrying a large straw tote trimmed with a pink bow, but family members could not agree upon her clothing. In all probability it was something pink or blue, her husband suggested, either frilled or lacy or "looking kind of baby-doll."

On second thought, though, although amusing, these descriptions reveal how little attention we pay to our loved ones, how much we take them for granted. Then again, I adored my mother. Would I be able to describe her to a police sketch artist well enough to get a recognizable portrait?