A NEW novel by Pulitzer prize-winning author Anne Tyler is an event worth celebrating. So it is appropriate that her latest slice of Baltimore life, Back When We Were Grownups, is set in a house where people pay to have celebrations.

The endless stream of parties is hosted by Beck, who years earlier wandered into The Open Arms - as the house is known - and into the heart of the sprawling and brawling Davitch clan.

The story begins, although as usual with Anne Tyler novels there really isn't a story as such, with Beck realising that maybe she isn't the life and soul of the party after all, and that maybe if she hadn't met Joe Davitch and taken on him, his three difficult daughters and several other prickly twigs from his family tree, she would have lived a different life, a life of intellectual fulfilment with her college sweetheart.

Is she really a natural-born celebrator, joyous and outgoing at every turn? Or is she an impostor in her own life?

Tyler explores these and other unsettling questions of love, loss, identity and family with her usual mix of unsentimental tenderness and razor-sharp wit. As is always the case with this highly-acclaimed American author, the writing is breathtakingly good, the characters are flawlessly drawn and the narrative never flags from beginning to end.

I'm already preparing the prawn vol-au-vents and blowing up the balloons for the launch of the next Anne Tyler novel. Chicken drumstick anyone?