A Spool of Blue Thread

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What to expect

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

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

Critics Review

  • 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

  • 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

    Mail on Sunday

  • Exquisite

    The Times

  • Tyler’s sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate

    Observer, Books That Made Our Year 2015

  • The extraordinary thing about her writing is the extent to which she makes one believe every word, deed and breath

    Guardian

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