Staff Pick
Tyler's story of three generations of the Whitshank family has all the typical hallmarks for which she is so well known. There is family drama and dysfunction and sorrow aplenty, but Tyler also has an amazing way of exposing family in all its ugly and beautiful glory. These characters love each other, except when they don't, and every interaction is crackling with Tyler's quirky and unassuming wit. Full of layered, whole characters, A Spool of Blue Thread shows how lives intersect — very rarely neatly — and how that mess gives meaning to every human connection. Tyler is a master of her craft — this being her 20th novel — and she is a treasure to read. You will recognize your own family (and yourself) in these pages, and cry, laugh, and cringe accordingly. So lovely! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize
It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . . This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.
Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
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About the Author
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.
Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
From the Hardcover edition.