Tyler, Anne "A Spool of Blue Thread"

Tyler, Anne "A Spool of Blue Thread" -  2015

The first book I read by Anne Tyler ("The Accidental Tourist") didn't leave a huge impression, the second one ("A Patchwork Planet") wasn't a whole lot better but the next ("Digging to America") was lovely. I really liked it. So, when a friend recommended her latest book, "A Spool of Blue Thread", I gave it a try.

It is a really good book, a story about four generations of a family. A family that consists of all the usual members, the ordinary ones and the not so ordinary ones. Anne Tyler tells about them as if you are there, as if you are part of the clan. It all sounds so familiar. And nice, even though not everything that happens is nice, it's what life is.

I can recommend this book if you like family stories, especially of the 20th century.

From the back cover: "'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.' 
This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family - their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog - is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father.
Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family."

Anne Tyler was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for "A Spool of Blue Thread" in 2015.