A Spool of Blue Thread (Paperback)
Anne Tyler (author)Published: 03/09/2015
Shortlisted For The Baileys Women's Fiction Prize
'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...' This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer's day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. 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 - four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home...
"One of my favourite authors." (Liane Moriarty).
"She spins gold." (Elizabeth Buchan).
"Anne Tyler has no peer." (Anita Shreve).
"Anne Tyler is one of my favourite writers and this is a delicious book." (Rachel Joyce).
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099598480
Number of pages: 480
Weight: 377 g
Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 30 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Anne Tyler is the most natural of novelist... I know no other novelist who draws so directly from real life, and whose work remains so uncontaminated by the shortcuts and cliches of television and Hollywood... A Spool of Blue Thread may be her best yet * Daily Mail *
One of the most accomplished writers working today... A must-read * Good Housekeeping *
Exquisite * The Times *
Her terrain is the family, and the micro-interactions between both its members and interlopers from without; her tone is superficially uncomplicated, her insights culmulative, her mode of realist fiction essentially conventional... its power derives from the restless depths beneath its unfractured surface * Guardian *
Perfects the intimate, easy style that makes reading her such a pleasure * Metro *
This is [Anne Tyler's] best in years * Mail on Sunday *
When it comes to painting a loving, funny and yet never simplistic portrait of American family life, Anne Tyler is, and always has been, the great mistress * Financial Times *
Deftly written with skilful characterisation... A master of conversation * Daily Express *
Tyler's twentieth novel finds fresh fictional riches in imaginative territory she has been exploring for half a century... Atmospherically rendered, the passage of time has both entertaining and heart-rending results. She has never written with more finesse, vitality and acuteness * Sunday Times, book of the year *
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“A familiar but unique family”
A Spool of Blue Thread is a novel about, on the face of it, very normal people to whom not very much happens. The Whitshanks are a family who are not brilliant, beautiful or rich - they are average and familiar. While... More
“An involving glimpse at a Baltimore family”
Anne Tyler's latest explores familiar territory - family secrets 'unspooling' through the course of the novels - but it's execution is sharp, flawlessly paced and moving. An ideal pick for a book...
“A familiar family read”
Anne Tyler has created very relatable and familiar characters - not that we have seen or read about them before, but these are the characters that could appear in your own family, in your own life. Very rarely do you... More
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