Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Anne Tyler is my all-time and forever favorite author. I've got all her books and I've read them multiple times. I plan to continue to do so for the rest of my reading lifetime. So it was a bittersweet moment when I turned the first page of her latest, and reportedly last, novel: "A Spool of Blue Thread". It won't be the last time I read it - but it was the last time I'd read an Anne Tyler for the first time. So I savored it. Tyler's families are what make her novels so special. They are alike and they are diverse; they are quirky, yet ordinary. In her first novel (1964) "If Morning Ever Comes" we meet the Hawkes family, soon followed by "The Tin Can Tree" and the Pike family (I particularly love this novel - I read it the first time when I was the age of the young woman who becomes the "handyman" and later when I was the age of older Mrs. Pike - it was a completely unique experience on each reading.) "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant" is many people's favorite Tyler novel and the Tull family is fascinating and a bit grotesque. Then we have the ultra-insular Leary family in "The Accidental Tourist" who play their own made-up card game called "Vaccination". I fell in love with the Moran family in "Breathing Lessons" and with the Bedloes in "Saint Maybe". (The Bedloe's share something with the Whitshank family of "A Spool of Blue Thread" in that they also take in "orphans" on holidays.) Here is how Tyler describes the Whitshanks: "There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. None of them was famous. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence. And in looks, there were no more than average...But like most families, they imagined they were special." I don't know about you, dear reader, but that describes MY family to a Tee. One thing all of Tyler's families have in common is that they are insular. They form their own, often inscrutable, unit and they don't let in others easily. Another aspect of most of Tyler's novels is the Big Old House. Tyler's houses, usually in Baltimore, are characters in themselves; often crumbling, always dynamic. I have had the good fortune to have stayed in homes such as these in the course of my life, so just reading her descriptions of these rambling, deep-porched, manses, brings me joy. I can easily picture the Big Old House settings as backdrops for the various Tyler Families. In many ways "A Spool of Blue Thread" is as much the story of a house, as a family, across three generations. Summer trips to Big Old Beach Houses are also a common occurrence in Tyler's novels. Nothing tells more about a family than how they behave on vacation together. Who stays with everyone in the Big House and who stays in their own place? What family traditions are sacrosanct and how does the family interact with the "townies". These themes and this setting have been used in many novels, including others by Tyler, and it's just as fun and fresh with the Whitshank clan as it was in "Ladder of Years" when Delia Grinstead walked away from her family while on their beach vacation. In short, Tyler writes about families - both their quotidian habits as well as their shocking and outrageous acts; "Morgan's Passing" has a Big Surprise plot twist that had me gasping! Never think you know where Tyler is going to take you, but surrender yourself to her witty and wonderful prose and her story-telling prowess and wrap yourself in her families. "A Spool of Blue Thread" offers you this one last chance to do it for the first time. NEWS FLASH! I'm now hearing that Ms. Tyler is not ruling out writing another novel! Know hope!