November Book Report: A Spool of Blue Thread

This book is like so many Anne Tyler novels, centered on a family with its own faults and quirks and set squarely in the Baltimore that Tyler so clearly loves.  It’s the story of the Whitshank family, who appear like any typical family on the surface and, like so many typical families, are anything but typical in the quirks and fault lines that reveal themselves as the novel unfolds.

I pick up Anne Tyler novels when I’m in the mood for a meaty story about a family.  I am a reader who likes happy endings and Tyler offers no guarantee of those, but neither do her novels end with dramatic sadness.  The book was an entre into a family not much like my own but, because it is a family with all the emotions families feel, it was familiar.  It was rather an easy read but also a story that lingers well after I read the last page.

Tyler is an artist; a capable and adept writer who constructs characters both sympathetic and tiresome, both awkward and adept; people who are recognizable in their very humanity.  I enjoyed this book and have thought about the story since I read it.  That’s the magic of an Anne Tyler book.