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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE | NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND USA TODAY | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington PostNPR • Chicago Tribune
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Telegraph • BookPage
Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . . . " This is how Abby Whitshank always describes the day she fell in love with Red in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal only part of the picture: Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red's parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn house that has always been their anchor. Praise for A Spool of Blue Thread "An act of literary enchantment . . . [Anne] Tyler remains among the best chroniclers of family life this country has ever produced."—The Washington Post
"Quintessential Anne Tyler, as well as quintessential American comedy . . . [She] has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving."—The New York Times Book Review "By my count I've now reviewed around fifty books for USA Today. I've never given any of them four stars until today: to A Spool of Blue Thread, the masterful twentieth novel by Anne Tyler."—USA Today
"By the end of this deeply beguiling novel, we come to know a reality entirely different from the one at the start."—O: The Oprah Magazine "Well-crafted, utterly absorbing and compelling . . . probably the best novel you will read all year."—Chicago Tribune "A miracle of sorts . . . tender, touching and funny . . . [an] understated masterpiece."—Associated Press
"Exploring [the] 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."—Elle "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 "Vintage Anne Tyler . . . [The Whitshanks are] rendered with such immediacy and texture that they might be our next-door neighbors."—Los Angeles Times "The magic of Tyler's novels [is that] you imagine these characters carrying on, muddling through, enduring the necessary sorrows and quiet joys of their lives somewhere beyond the page."—The Seattle Times "The sort of novel that's hard to disentangle yourself from. Warm, charming and emotionally radiant, it surely must be counted as among Tyler's best."—The Miami Herald "Prose so polished it practically glows on the page."—Houston Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE | NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND USA TODAY | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington PostNPR • Chicago Tribune
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The Telegraph • BookPage
Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . . . " This is how Abby Whitshank always describes the day she fell in love with Red in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate an indefinable kind of specialness, but like all families, their stories reveal only part of the picture: Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red's parents, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to the grandchildren carrying the Whitshank legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn house that has always been their anchor. Praise for A Spool of Blue Thread "An act of literary enchantment . . . [Anne] Tyler remains among the best chroniclers of family life this country has ever produced."—The Washington Post
"Quintessential Anne Tyler, as well as quintessential American comedy . . . [She] has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving."—The New York Times Book Review "By my count I've now reviewed around fifty books for USA Today. I've never given any of them four stars until today: to A Spool of Blue Thread, the masterful twentieth novel by Anne Tyler."—USA Today
"By the end of this deeply beguiling novel, we come to know a reality entirely different from the one at the start."—O: The Oprah Magazine "Well-crafted, utterly absorbing and compelling . . . probably the best novel you will read all year."—Chicago Tribune "A miracle of sorts . . . tender, touching and funny . . . [an] understated masterpiece."—Associated Press
"Exploring [the] 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."—Elle "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 "Vintage Anne Tyler . . . [The Whitshanks are] rendered with such immediacy and texture that they might be our next-door neighbors."—Los Angeles Times "The magic of Tyler's novels [is that] you imagine these characters carrying on, muddling through, enduring the necessary sorrows and quiet joys of their lives somewhere beyond the page."—The Seattle Times "The sort of novel that's hard to disentangle yourself from. Warm, charming and emotionally radiant, it surely must be counted as among Tyler's best."—The Miami Herald "Prose so polished it practically glows on the page."—Houston Chronicle
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Chapter One
Late one July evening in 1994, Red and Abby Whitshank had a phone call from their son Denny. They were getting ready for bed at the time. Abby was standing at the bureau in her slip, drawing hairpins one by one from her scattery sand-colored topknot. Red, a dark, gaunt man in striped pajama bottoms and a white T‑shirt, had just sat down on the edge of the bed to take his socks off; so when the phone rang on the nightstand beside him, he was the one who answered. "Whitshank residence," he said.
And then, "Well, hey there."
Abby turned from the mirror, both arms still raised to her head.
"What's that," he said, without a question mark.
"Huh?" he said. "Oh, what the hell, Denny!"
Abby dropped her arms.
"Hello?" he said. "Wait. Hello? Hello?"
He was silent for a moment, and then he replaced the receiver.
"What?" Abby asked him.
"Says he's gay."
"What?"
"Said he needed to tell me something: he's gay."
"And you hung up on him!"
"No, Abby. He hung up on me. All I said was 'What the hell,' and he hung up on me. Click! Just like that."
"Oh, Red, how could you?" Abby wailed. She spun away to reach for her bathrobe—a no-color chenille that had once been pink. She wrapped it around her and tied the sash tightly. "What possessed you to say that?" she asked him.
"I didn't mean anything by it! Somebody springs something on you, you're going to say 'What the hell,' right?" Abby grabbed a handful of the hair that pouffed over her forehead.
"All I meant was," Red said, " 'What the hell next, Denny? What are you going to think up next to worry us with?' And he knew I meant that. Believe me, he knew. But now he can make this all my fault, my narrow-mindedness or fuddy-duddiness or whatever he wants to call it. He was glad I said that to him. You could tell by how fast he hung up on me; he'd been just hoping all along that I would say the wrong thing."
"All right," Abby said, turning practical. "Where was he calling from?"
"How would I know where he was calling from? He doesn't have a fixed address, hasn't been in touch all summer, already changed jobs twice that we know of and probably more that we don't know of . . . A nineteen-year-old boy and we have no idea what part of the planet he's on! You've got to wonder what's wrong, there." "Did it sound like it was long distance? Could you hear that kind of rushing sound? Think. Could he have been right here in Baltimore?"
"I don't know, Abby."
She sat down next to him. The mattress slanted in her direction; she was a wide, solid woman. "We have to find him," she said. Then, "We should have that whatsit—caller ID." She leaned forward and gazed fiercely at the phone. "Oh, God, I want caller ID this instant!"
"What for? So you could phone him back and he could just let it ring?"
"He wouldn't do that. He would know it was me. He would answer, if he knew it was me."
She jumped up from the bed and started pacing back and forth, up and down the Persian runner that was worn nearly white in the middle from all the times she had paced it before. This was an attractive room, spacious and well designed, but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.
"What did his voice sound like?" she asked. "Was he nervous? Was he upset?"
"He was fine."
"So you say. Had he been drinking, do you think?"
"I couldn't tell."
"Were other people with him?"
"I couldn't tell, Abby."
"Or maybe . . . one other person?"
He sent her a sharp...
About the Author-
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.
Reviews-
New York Times Book Review
"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."
Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books
"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."
Los Angeles Times
"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."
Wall Street Journal
"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."
Washington Post
"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."
Newsday
"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."
NPR.org
"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."
Baltimore Sun
"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."
Christian Science Monitor
"A Spool of Blue Thread deserves to stand among Tyler's best writing."
Buffalo News
"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."
The New Yorker
"In warm, lucid prose, Tyler skips back and forth through the twentieth century to depict the Whitshanks."
Seattle Times
"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."
The Guardian
"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."
Associated Press
"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."
Boston Globe
"Tyler's genius as a novelist involves her ability to withhol
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