Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . . . ” This is how Abby Whitshank always describes the day she fell in love with Red in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal … families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories 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 parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn house that has always been their anchor.
Praise for A Spool of Blue Thread
“An act of literary enchantment . . . [Anne] Tyler remains among the best chroniclers of family life this country has ever produced.”—The Washington Post
“Quintessential Anne Tyler, as well as quintessential American comedy . . . [She] has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving.”—The New York Times Book Review
“By my count I’ve now reviewed around fifty books for USA Today. I’ve never given any of them four stars until today: to A Spool of Blue Thread, the masterful twentieth novel by Anne Tyler.”—USA Today
“By the end of this deeply beguiling novel, we come to know a reality entirely different from the one at the start.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Well-crafted, utterly absorbing and compelling . . . probably the best novel you will read all year.”—Chicago Tribune
“A miracle of sorts . . . tender, touching and funny . . . [an] understated masterpiece.”—Associated Press
“Exploring [the] dichotomy—the imperfections that reside within a polished exterior—is Tyler’s specialty, and her latest generation-spanning work accomplishes just that, masterfully and monumentally.”—Elle
“The story of any family is told through the prism of time. And no storyteller compares to Tyler when it comes to unspooling those tales.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Vintage Anne Tyler . . . [The Whitshanks are] rendered with such immediacy and texture that they might be our next-door neighbors.”—Los Angeles Times
“The magic of Tyler’s novels [is that] you imagine these characters carrying on, muddling through, enduring the necessary sorrows and quiet joys of their lives somewhere beyond the page.”—The Seattle Times
“The sort of novel that’s hard to disentangle yourself from. Warm, charming and emotionally radiant, it surely must be counted as among Tyler’s best.”—The Miami Herald
“Prose so polished it practically glows on the page.”—Houston Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.more
It wasn’t the most compelling book I have read. I kept reading thinking something dramatic would occur but it didn’t
It is amazing what family members can do to eachother.
Are family lives really held together by a fragile thread? Tyler’s exploration of this concept is brilliantly and beautifully executed through the minute details of family life.
And who is the center of the family? Mom? Dad? The wayward brother?
Reading this book creates an urge to jump in and become a part of this family as they work through …
A lot of reading, hoping the story of a very dysfunctional family is going somewhere, only to discover at the sudden ending that almost all the characters are continuing in their own sort of delusion about life & love. My other thought is that dysfunction is never short, it plays out over and over and over.
Great character building.
Just long drawn out family angst.
Well written about a family and a house. No real plot. Just blah ending for me, but seemed,hopeful. Did like the character development. I’d read this author again, but would hope for a little more excitement.
I had a hard time following the plot of this story. It is like a family’s history. It is interesting but very slow in parts. It is a very descriptive story line through several generations.
A Spool of Blue Thread is loaded with eccentric characters and is an entertaining read.
Ok, so so
Perhaps it was too realistic for this time in my life. Virus threat and losses ,etc.
taking place.
Not exactly my Lind of book.
Loved this story. Hard to put down.
A great multi generational read. Much deeper than it originally appears and has a non judgmental regard for it’s characters.
A book so painfully tedious should be classified as an instrument of torture
This is a lengthy dissection of a family’s interactions, but pointlessly. I expected someone to achieve peace, self understanding because of all of the introspection. The book ends unsatisfactorily with the main characters in a morass worse than was present at the beginning of the novel. Ugh!
This book left me wondering why I bought it. The review had me intrigued enough to purchase this novel, however after I finishing reading the last page, I was left with what was the point of this book. The book was well written, but in my opinion it went no where. Leaving me to wonder why I bought it and though the review intrigued my interest …
This family story of several generations held my attention as I identified with various characters!
This is an interesting read–meandering and comfortable. Interesting because the author takes her time developing the characters, slowly shedding light on their secrets and back stories. Her descriptions of the various settings are beautiful and you are swept away into multiple generations of a family of ordinary Americans and their lives where …
This was a hard book to get interested in. Reviews sounded good so I took a chance save your dollars.