ANNE TYLER was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her twentieth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
"Graceful and capacious . . . Quintessential Anne Tyler, as well as
quintessential American comedy. Tyler has a knack for turning
sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving. Her
great gift is playing against the American dream, the dark side of
which is the falsehood at its heart: that given hard work and good
intentions, any family can attain the Norman Rockwell ideal of
happiness . . . She's a comic novelist, and a wise one." --New York
Times Book Review
"Anne Tyler's novels are invitations to spend time in the houses of
the Baltimore neighborhood that she has built--house by house,
block by block, word by word--over her long and bright career."
--Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books "Tyler has proved
again and again that a chronicle of middle-class family life in
Baltimore can illuminate the human condition as acutely as any
novel of ideas, albeit with a more modest demeanor . . . The
Whitshanks [are] rendered with such immediacy and texture that they
might be our next-door neighbors." --Los Angeles Times "Happily, A
Spool of Blue Thread is a throwback to the meaty family dramas with
which Tyler won her popularity in the 1980s . . . As in the best of
her novels, she here extends her warmest affection to the erring,
the inconstant, and the mismatched--the people who are 'like
anybody else, ' in Red's words." --Wall Street Journal "An act of
literary enchantment . . . How can it be so wonderful? . . . Tyler
remains among the best chroniclers of family life this country has
ever produced . . . Some of the most lovely and loving writing
Tyler has ever done." --Washington Post "It's been a long time
since I read a book I wished would not end, purposely slowing my
progress to save a bit for later. A Spool of Blue Thread was that
kind of book . . . The Whitshanks are us, in a way, and this makes
them endlessly interesting to watch, as well as very touching."
--Newsday
"Well-built, homey and unpretentious . . . Readers of any age
should have no trouble relating . . . We can only hope that Tyler
will continue spooling out her colorful Baltimore tales for a long
time to come." --NPR.org "Among her finest . . . There's no
novelist living today who writes more insightfully (and often
humorously) than Tyler does about the fictions and frictions of
family life." --Baltimore Sun "A Spool of Blue Thread deserves to
stand among Tyler's best writing." --Christian Science Monitor
"Tyler is easily the closest we have to an American Chekhov . . .
[Her] books will outlive us all . . . Tyler has rarely been given
credit as subversive, because her style is so simple, direct, and
sincere. But the stories she tells often detonate their own
structure, and resonate long after many more superficially dazzling
novels have faded . . . No one has been doing it longer, and by now
no one does it better." --Buffalo News
"In warm, lucid prose, Tyler skips back and forth through the
twentieth century to depict the Whitshanks." --The New Yorker
"Fifty years, and Tyler's still got it . . . [She] is a master at
creating clans; at crafting groups of diverse characters who
nonetheless belong together, who seem vulnerable and honest and
real . . . I couldn't put A Spool of Blue Thread down." --Seattle
Times
"The extraordinary thing about all her writing is the extent to
which she makes one believe every word, deed, and breath. A Spool
of Blue Thread is no exception. [It keeps] one as absorbed as if it
were one's own family she were describing, and as if what happened
to them were necessary reading . . . What she has that neither
Marilynne Robinson nor Alice Munro possess to the same degree is an
irrepressible sense of the comedy beneath even the most melancholy
surface . . . Such a joy." --The Guardian
"Deeply moving . . . A Spool of Blue Thread is a miracle of sorts,
a tender, touching and funny story about three generations of an
ordinary American family who are, of course, anything but . . .
Tyler's accomplishment in this understated masterpiece is to
convince us not only that the Whitshanks are remarkable but also
that every family--no matter how seemingly ordinary--is in its own
way special." --Associated Press "Tyler's genius as a novelist
involves her ability to withhold moral judgment of her characters.
Tyler trusts the reader to decide . . . tightly written and highly
readable . . . Tyler employs dark humor wonderfully . . .
Thoughtful and intriguing." --Boston Globe
"Absorbing and deeply satisfying." --Entertainment Weekly "For half
a century, Anne Tyler has been doing something similar [to Émile
Zola], building up a cast of characters, turning in to yet another
Baltimore lane, forming a composite picture of American life from
Roosevelt to Obama . . . Tyler's comic naturalism uses the family
of today as a way of getting inside the 'ordinary, ' in the sense
not of bland but of universal." --New Statesman "Have you ever
worried that one of your most favorite authors might disappoint you
with a new novel? Well, fear not. Anne Tyler delivers all you
expect and more in her latest . . . A truly authentic look at
modern day American families . . . Piercing." --Huffington Post
"The master delivers, again. (Like you're surprised.) . . . Moving
and resonant . . . This novel is as clever and compelling as her
best work." --Bustle "You legion of lovers of Anne Tyler are going
to get this new novel of hers and love it, too . . . With this
novel, as with her others, it's easy to underestimate or simply
miss the art that looks and feels so much like life--which is,
after all the essence of Anne Tyler's art and, like life, never
easy at its best." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Tyler has
constructed the character of Abby with all the care to rival some
of her best previous characters from her 50 years of writing . . .
When you reach the last page of the book, you hope the author has
the first draft of another book about the same people already
written. There's a good chance you'll feel this way about the
Whitshank family." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "Tyler's novels have
won a legion of fans. And they will not be disappointed by A Spool
of Blue Thread . . . As Tyler delves further into her creations'
psyches, she ratchets up to familial drama, and she does so with
prose that occasionally soars from the page and stops the reader's
breath . . . A humane and moving novel." --Richmond
Times-Dispatch
"Tyler tenderly unwinds the tangled skeins of three generations,
then knits them together . . . in precise often hilarious detail .
. . By the end of this deeply beguiling novel, we come to know a
reality entirely different form the one at the start. Not that
anyone's lying, only that everything--the way we see the world and
the way we understand it to work--is changed by the intimate,
incremental shifts of daily life." --O magazine "Tyler slyly
dismantles the myth-making behind all our family stories . . . She
does so with a compassion that recognizes that few of us will be
immune to similar accommodations with the truth . . . The novel
[makes] piercing forays into the long-distant past . . . We are not
reading the fiction of estrangement, or of disorientation, but its
power derives from the restless depths beneath its unfractured
surface." --The Guardian
"Exploring this 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 . . . Indelible." --Elle "This book is about love and
the tensions that bind us . . . Focused, wholly audacious and damn
good." --Gawker "Tyler show[s] once again that she's a gifted and
engrossing storyteller." --Publishers Weekly "Probably the best
novel you will read all year . . . A fine, secretly well-crafted,
utterly absorbing, and compelling new addition to the Tyler canon .
. . Lovely, funny, tragic, and at times almost unbearably
poignant." --Chicago Tribune
"By my count I've now reviewed around 50 books for USA Today. I've
never given any of them four stars until today: to A Spool of Blue
Thread, the masterful 20th novel by Anne Tyler . . . A Spool of
Blue Thread is a flight forward . . . Akin to the enigmatic Alice
Munro, or, if you prefer, a direct influence on Jonathan Franzen."
--USA Today
"Tolstoy isn't the only novelist to have noticed that happy
families are happy in the same way. In our time, Anne Tyler makes
this observation with more generosity of spirit and humor than
Tolstoy ever showed . . . Here's an author who, after fifty years
of writing, continues at the top of her game. With prose so
polished it practically glows on the page, she makes fiction
writing seem like an effortless enterprise." --Houston Chronicle "A
Spool of Blue Thread showcases Tyler's knack for capturing thoughts
and feelings unsparingly and sympathetically . . . The novel is
filled with authentic and memorable moments." --Philadelphia
Inquirer "Sitting down with an Anne Tyler novel is not unlike
taking your place at Thanksgiving dinner . . . 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
"The sort of novel that's hard to disentangle yourself from . . .
Warm, charming and emotionally radiant, A Spool of Blue Thread
surely must be counted as among Tyler's best . . . Even the closest
family has secrets, and Tyler reveals them in a satisfying and
moving way . . . That's more than 50 years of producing luminous,
comic, heartbreaking fiction . . . Here's hoping for more of her
wise, wonderful words." --Miami Herald
"Thematically similar to Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in many
ways, A Spool of Blue Thread delivers plenty of situational comedy.
But it's also incisive in exploring how families work--and don't."
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "What a wonderful, natural writer she
is . . . She knows all the secrets of the human heart." --Monica
Ali, author of Brick Lane "Anne Tyler is one of my favourite
writers and this is a delicious book. It is like being with a dear
old friend. It is very special." --Rachel Joyce, author of The
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry ". . .Tyler is as fleet and
graceful as a skater, her prose as transparent as ice . . . We get
swept up in the spin of conversations, the slipstream of
consciousness, and the glide and dip of domestic life, then feel
the sting of Tyler's quick and cutting insights into unjust
assumptions about class, gender, age, and race . . . Tyler's long
dedication to language and story [is] an artistic practice made
perfect in this charming, funny, and shrewd novel of the paradoxes
of self, family, and home." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)
"Tyler gives us lovely insights into an ordinary family who, 'like
most families . . . imagined they were special.' They will be
special to readers thanks to the extraordinary richness and
delicacy with which Tyler limns complex interactions and mixed
feelings familiar to us all and yet marvelously particular to the
empathetically rendered members of the Whitshank clan. The texture
of everyday experience transmuted into art . . . Family life in
Baltimore [is] still a fresh and compelling subject in the hands of
this gifted veteran." --Kirkus Reviews (starred) Reviews from the
UK: "[Tyler's] extraordinary gift for producing what seems less
like fiction than actuality works wonders again. Characters all but
elbow their way off the page with lifelikeness . . . Masterly . . .
Magnificent . . . A gleamingly accomplished book." --Peter Kemp,
The Sunday Times
"A glorious treat for her loyal and attentive readers . . . As
accomplished as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons, it is
the best novel Tyler has published in decades . . . It is a
masterclass of restrained writing, lightened with gentle comedy and
pitch-perfect dialogue . . . The complex narrative has more layers
than Merrick Whitshank's wedding cake." --The Independent "She has
given us plenty of reminders of her lavish strengths: the quiet
authority of her prose; the ultimately persuasive belief that a
kindly eye is not necessarily a dishonest one; and perhaps above
all, the fact that, 50 years after she started, she still gives us
a better sense than almost anyone else of what it's like to be
alive." --The Sunday Telegraph "A Spool of Blue Thread may be her
best yet . . . Anne Tyler leaves me thrilled and baffled by her
genius . . . How does she do it? . . . Her books are somehow more
gripping than the paciest transcontinental thriller . . . I know of
no other novelist who draws so directly from real life, and whose
work remains so uncontaminated by the shortcuts and clichés of
television and Hollywood." --Mail on Sunday "I've been reading Anne
Tyler novels for more than 20 years and she has never let me down .
. . Tyler has the remarkable gift of laying bare the ordinariness
of family life and thereby turning it into something extraordinary.
Scratch beneath the surface and most families are dysfunctional and
this is what Tyler evokes time and time again with mesmerizing
power . . . Read this and you won't be disappointed . . .
Engrossing." --Vanessa Berridge, Express "It is wonderful to pick
up a novel from a bonafide literary superstar. A Spool of Blue
Thread is Anne Tyler's twentieth novel and it shows in every
flawless sentence . . . A stunning novel about family life which
just rings so true--it depicts the bonds and the tensions, the love
and the exasperation beautifully . . . A terrific novel." --The
Bookseller, UK (Book of the Month)
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