Nothing about it signals the possibility of shock. Her terrain is the family, and the micro-interactions between both its members and interlopers from without her tone is superficially uncomplicated, her insights cumulative, her mode of realist fiction essentially conventional. We are more likely to find ourselves around a dinner table than at a homicide scene in Leakin Park. Not unconnected is the fact that Tyler has determinedly mined the same seam throughout her career, basing the vast majority of her novels in a Baltimore that seems far from the fictional landscape of The Wire or the non-fictional landscape of Serial. But although Blades’ attack was swaggeringly hyperbolic, the question of whether Tyler’s work errs too heavily on the side of consolation has lingered, despite (or because of) her immense and loyal readership and high-profile fans such as Nick Hornby and John Updike. We think we’re being comforted, but in fact we’re being fooled. “NutraSweet”, in this context, is worse than sugary the sweetness isn’t even real, and may furtively do us harm.
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