Strangers and friends

ANNE TYLER’S eye for describing how families may (or may not) function is an artistic wonder. Her novels, set mostly in the Baltimore area, lovingly capture the invented rituals, small dramas, hidden slights and tensions, and the deeper ties that ultimately keep family members imperfectly connected. Tyler’s wholesome, comedic irony is to her modest, middle-class WASPs what Chekhov’s bittersweet wisdom was to his melancholic Russian gentry.

Few of her casual readers may have realized it, but Tyler spent years married to Taghi Modarressi, an Iranian psychiatrist who died in 1997. Moreover, at one time the novelist-to-be pursued graduate work in (of all things) Soviet studies. Somehow, that world of “others” has scarcely cropped up in her novels’ everyday, Anglo milieu -- until “Digging to America,” her 17th book. Her human geography is still there, but now fully half the dramatis personae are Iranian Americans, whom we witness at close hand. For the first time, the author also lavishes attention on the growth of little kids and on the ambivalent yearnings of their widowed, lonely grandparents. Within the confines of her deceptively understated art, Tyler’s experiential range here expands considerably.

“Digging” opens in August 1997, at an arrival gate in Baltimore’s airport. Two couples happen to be awaiting delivery of their respective adoptive baby girls from South Korea. Couple No. 1, the mildly countercultural Bitsy and Brad Donaldson, are accompanied by a large family entourage, one of whom videotapes the joyous event. Couple No. 2, the more reserved, olive-skinned Sami and Ziba Yazdan, are of Iranian stock.

This chance meeting leads to an extended mutual friendship. Every year, on Aug. 15, the families gather to celebrate “Arrival Day” (their shared substitute for birthday bashes) and watch the video. Over the years, lives variously interweave -- the two infant playmates, the ever-learning parents as well as the grandfolks, who’ve adapted to the reduced realities of widow- and widowerhood. As expected, the moms chat about the toddlers, sometimes disagreeing on how to raise them (privately they both regret not having had birth children). Topics such as the Sept. 11 attacks and U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq come up only as incidental backdrop.

What’s completely new to Tyler’s storytelling in this novel are close-ups of Iranian expatriates and their full-grown, U.S.-raised offspring. They reminisce about the old country, disagree about the shah, employ terms of endearment or once-upon-a-time formulas from the Persian and throw dazzling dinners with splendiferous Iranian delicacies. The young adult professionals take on varying shades of an American identity, and their elders deplore the erosion of homeland customs and language. Inevitably, looking at the world around them, they gripe about “these Americans” and their notorious provincialism, their awkwardness with Iranian names, their bent for righteousness, their lawsuit manias. The phrase, “It’s so American!” bobs up more than once in these scenes. On the other hand, their American counterparts, being an enlightened bunch, worry about how they’re perceived by foreigners and resent being all “lumped together.”

But there’s more to life -- and to this novel -- than a clash of cultures. Tyler also gets smiling mileage out of watching two Korean tots grow into suburban, school-age chatterboxes. One of the chapters is narrated from the fresh, wide-eyed viewpoint of the children. There’s also the remote possibility of romance blooming between the recently bereaved yet effusive Dave, Bitsy’s father, and Sami’s wise, imperious, long-widowed mother, Maryam. The push-pull ties between this mixed sexagenarian pair become a page-turner: The perhaps-outcome of their perhaps-love is as tantalizing as in any thriller story.

In recent interviews, Tyler has admitted that “Digging to America” is a “love letter” to her late husband, as well as a celebration of her “very large, very talkative” Iranian family. In the wake of her personal bereavement she breaks new artistic ground, and readers are the ultimate beneficiaries.

Oh yes, and one more thing: The cryptic title is a twist on the old childhood chestnut about digging a hole that gets you to China. Six-year-old Jin-Ho Donaldson, for her part, idly wonders out loud about what some kids in China might think if they dug a deep hole and, popping out, found themselves face to face with Jin-Ho and her friends in Baltimore. It’s a delightful aside among many to be savored in this latest from one of our more subtle and humane novelists. *