'A Spool of Blue Thread' by Anne Tyler is a multi-generational family saga that explores the dynamics, secrets, and quirks of the Whitshank family living in Baltimore. The story revolves around the Whitshanks' house, which serves as a central character, and moves back and forth in time to unravel the family's mythology and relationships. The narrative delves into themes of aging, dysfunction, and the complexity of family bonds, offering a realistic portrayal of ordinary yet special characters dealing with everyday life challenges.
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Has Romance?
A Spool of Blue Thread includes elements of romance, particularly in the relationships explored throughout the generations, but it is not primarily a romance novel.
From The Publisher:
**THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER**
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015**
'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...
**ANNE TYLER HAS SOLD OVER 1 MILLION BOOKS WORLDWIDE**
'One of my favourite authors ' Liane Moriarty
'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan
'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve
'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks
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1 comment(s)
The life of the Whitshanks is seen through the years in this well-written reflection of life and death and the chords that bind the characters' experiences between both.
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A Spool of Blue Thread?
About the Author:
Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grownups, A Patchwork Planet, The Amateur Marriage, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Vinegar Girl, Clock Dance and Redhead by the Side of the Road. In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence; and in 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize.
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