The stories we tell define us. What we enjoy reading typifies us as well. Some of us want books with lots of action. Others prefer subtle mirrors into their own lives. Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread is the latter, a novel about life as most people live it, a book in which going for a walk is an event. Critics are divided on Tyler’s twentieth novel. The Chicago Tribune says it’s “probably the best novel you will read all year.” The New York Times published two reviews – one glowing and one by the irascible Michiko Kakutani who found it predictable. I love it because of its predictability. Tyler’s third person narration that drops me into the Whitshank family while standing back and allowing me to settle into the rhythm of their lives is the kind of predictability I want from a favorite author. In A Spool of Blue Thread, Tyler gives me a new story and new characters while continually allowing me the comfort of knowing she’ll safely guide me through their journey.
This particular journey begins in 1994 with a phone call from Denny, the prodigal son.
“A nineteen-year-old boy and we have no idea what part of the planet he’s on. You’ve got to wonder what’s wrong there” says Red, Denny’s perfectionist father. Abby, his mother, is a fixer who notes,
“A nineteen-year-old boy and we have no idea what part of the planet he’s on. You’ve got to wonder what’s wrong there” says Red, Denny’s perfectionist father. Abby, his mother, is a fixer who notes,
“We have to find him. We should have that whatsit – caller ID.” . . .
“What for? So you could phone him back and he could just let it ring.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He would know it was me. He would answer, if he knew it was me.”
Skipping ahead to 2012, Red’s had a heart attack and Abby is forgetting things.
“She began to go away, somehow, even when she was present. . . . She actually seemed unhappy, which wasn’t like her in the least. She took on a fretful expression, and her hair – gray now and chopped level with her jaw, as thick and bushy as the wig on an old china doll – developed a frazzled look, as if she had just emerged from some distressing misadventure.”
Abby had emerged from a distressing misadventure. When everyone in her family wasn’t happy and present, Abby was distressed and her “mind skips” were making her wonder if she’d be able to fix everything. Each of the four Whitshank children wants to make everything okay too, but in different ways fitting their unique personalities. When Denny returns and, as the prodigal always does, upsets the precarious balance, things shift. As Tyler navigates the Whitshank’s struggles with how to deal with aging parents, she inhabits a place most of us have been or know we’ll soon visit. She hands us a mirror into an ordinary family who “like most families . . . imagined they were special.” The novel delves into Red and Abby’s past and shows us how Red’s deceased father, who built their home, still influences their lives. Tyler uses the house as a metaphor for the constancy of their story and for the impossibility of keeping life from changing.
Anne Tyler is the Dowager Queen of the Ordinary, she’s the quintessence of the quotidian which is ironic because Tyler isn’t one to use words like quintessence and quotidian. Instead, she shows what a slice of normal life feels like. She embeds us in the conventional and the comfortable and once she has us safely sitting on the living room couch, she shows us real life. Most of us won’t ever walk the red carpet, score the winning touchdown, or murder anyone. Anne Tyler writes about us and our lives.
Summing it Up: Read A Spool of Blue Thread to read about your own family, your own life. Read it to understand the people who inhabit your world – the ones who make it easy and the ones who make it tough. Absolutely read it for the sweet, sweet ending that proves that you can go home again.
Rating 5 stars
Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club
Publication date: February 10, 2015
Read an Excerpt: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/246387/a-spool-of-blue-thread/
Reading Group Guide: (Spoiler Alert: Don’t read this until after you read the novel.) http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/246387/a-spool-of-blue-thread/
What Others are Saying:
Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-spool-of-blue-thread-anne-tyler-20150212-story.html
The Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8367233e-b36a-11e4-9449-00144feab7de.html
New York Times (two reviews because one loves it and one doesn’t):
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-101-87427-1
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