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A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
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Paperback
$18.73 -
Compact Disc
$50.80
Annotation
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.
Publisher Description
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S FICTION PRIZE
A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB PICK
'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...
'One of my favourite authors' Liane Moriarty
'She spins gold' Elizabeth Buchan
'Anne Tyler has no peer' Anita Shreve
'Anne Tyler is one of my favourite writers and this is a delicious book' Rachel Joyce
Author Biography
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 and Clock Dance.
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.
Review
Every sentence is perfect in this witty story of family life Sun The combination of direct appeal, subtle perception and unshowy artistry in Tyler's fiction has been admired by authors ranging from Joyce Carol Oates and Carol Shields to Jonathan Franzen and Sebastian Faulks... Her extraordinary gift for producing what seems less like fiction than actuality works wonders again... magnificent -- Peter Kemp Sunday Times Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing -- Rachel Joyce Observer, Books That Made Our Year 2015 May be her best yet, though, to be honest, this is what I always tend to say after reading the latest Anne Tyler. I've now read it twice, and I may well read it again -- Craig Brown Mail on Sunday Tyler writes with an apparent effortlessness which conceals great art. The Whitshank family is tragic, comic, absurd, absorbing -- and lives on its illusions, as every family must. You'll shiver with recognition -- Helen Dunmore Stylist The extraordinary thing about her writing is the extent to which she makes one believe every word, deed and breath -- Kate Kellaway Guardian Tyler's sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate -- Hanya Yanigihara Observer, Books That Made Our Year 2015 Exquisite The Times I love Tyler's writing... She writes so beautifully and with such insight. Read her books and she can actually change your view, change how you see the world -- Judy Finnigan Mail on Sunday Tyler's twentieth novel finds fresh fictional riches in imaginative territory she has been exploring for half a century... Atmospherically rendered, the passage of time has both entertaining and heart-rending results. She has never written with more finesse, vitality and acuteness Sunday Times, book of the year
Prizes
Short-listed for Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015 (UK)
Short-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 (UK)
Long-listed for IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2017 (UK)
