Absorbing saga of four generations of a Baltimore family – told in reverse order.
I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.
Pulitzer Prize winner, Anne Tyler, has been a favorite of mine for a long time, so when a new title appears, it becomes a major event in my mind. She writes slowly – about 2-3 years or more between books. A Spool of Blue Thread is her twentieth novel.
The most interesting thing about the novel is its structure. The novel is a story of four generations of a family in Baltimore, Maryland. Tyler begins with Red and Abby Whitshank, who have two daughters, a son, Denny, and a boy taken in by Abby as an infant when his parents are killed in an automobile accident. They conceal this last bit of information from Douglas – nicknamed “Stem,” until he has reached adulthood. Oddly, the other children know about the circumstances of his birth but never tell Stem.
As the novel opens, Denny has disappeared from the family. Every few months, he calls from some unusual place, far away from his parents, only to cut off contact, until he resurfaces somewhere else. Suddenly, he shows up at his parents’ home with a child, Susan. The novel then shifts to the story of the meeting and courtship of Red and Abby. Abby is about to give into Dane, who wants to marry her, but she has an eye on Red. Then the narrative shifts to Junior and Linnie, Red’s parents, how they met and eventually married and had a daughter, Merrick. The novel ends with the sale of the family home – built by Junior – and the removal of Red to an apartment.
Tyler has a gentle, smooth, and completely absorbing style. She draws characters as round and full as humanly possible. By telling the story in reverse order – from youngest to eldest – Tyler excavates the Whitshank family tree. A narrator takes up an observation about Junior and Linnae. Tyler writes, “How could this man have been the hero of Mrs. Whitshank’s romance? Whether you found it dashing or tawdry, at least it had been a romance, complete with intrigue and scandal and a wrenching separation. But Junior Whitshank was as dry as a bone, droning on relentlessly while the other diners ate their food in dogged silence. Only his wife was looking at him, her face alight with interest as he discussed the value of hard labor, then the deplorable lack of initiative in the younger generation, then the benefits conferred by having lived through the Great Depression. If only young folks today had lived through a depression the way he had lived through a depression” (255).
In several of Tyler’s novels – especially The Accidental Tourist – a a bubbly, vivacious woman becomes enamored of a quiet, reserved man. Despite the man’s protests, he succumbs to the charms of the woman, and as the novel ends, it is clear to the reader, the guy is falling for the girl. In Blue Thread, the bubbly girl turns out to be 18-year-old Linnie, who has a desperate crush on Junior.
Shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize, Anne Tyler’s wonderful saga of four generations will surprise and delight the reader. In A Spool of Blue Thread, I believe everyone can find a family member who seems ever so tantalizingly familiar. 5 stars
Likely Stories is a production of KWBU. I’m Jim McKeown. Read my blog at RabbitReader.blogspot.com and happy reading!
