"A Spool of Blue Thread,'' with its largely omniscient viewpoint and wide, far-reaching emotional landscape, epitomizes the famous first line in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina": "Happy families are all alike every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Hearted? Tyler trusts the reader to decide this and other questions about her characters' integrity or goodness. Is Denny an easy scapegoat or simply selfish and cold Tyler's genius as a novelist involves her ability to withhold moral judgment of her characters. Readers anticipating an easy "domestic" novel will be terrifically surprised. The two have lived the whole of their married life in the house Red's father built they are understandably reluctant to give up their independence.Īs all four siblings get together, resentments build secrets are revealed and in the middle of the novel, a strange tragedy turns the entire plot on its head. Abby is a former social worker and amateur poet who for years has been "sending her efforts to tiny magazines that promptly sent them back." Red is a successful builder and businessman. Tyler, best known for "The Accidental Tourist'' (1985) and the 1989 Pulitzer winner "Breathing Lessons," is a writer who takes a quintessentially American story and reveals its darker and more unexpected underside.Ībby and Red Whitshank are an aging couple facing a crossroads that will be familiar to many. The lived story, the novel reveals, is far more complex than the one repeatedly told as part of a family's known history. "A Spool of Blue Thread,'' the newest novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler, is a thoughtful and intriguing study of the role of memory in creating and destroying the stories we tell ourselves about love.
Anne Tyler’s novel follows an aging couple and their family.
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