If I say this is a novel about a house, and the secrets it harbours, would that give the impression it’s about bricks and mortar (and, in this case, a lot of wood) rather than people? But I want you to avoid the disorientation I experienced for the first few chapters as I tried to grasp hold of the plot. Okay, I thought, eavesdropping on a father’s abrupt phone call from his semi-estranged son, this is a novel about the black sheep of the family, the prodigal son. But no, soon we were fast forwarding twenty years, with Red, the father, suffering a heart murmur, and Abby, the mother, on the verge of dementia, into a story about getting to grips with old age. But then the tail veers off into the story of Red’s father, Junior Whitshank, a perfectionist carpenter who built the family house on commission long before he could have afforded to live in it, and was more devoted to it than he was to his wife. It took another diversion into a surprise revelation about the youngest of Red and Abby’s four children before I could allow myself to give up my search for the plot and enjoy the ride. Like the cruising teenagers depicted on the cover, you don’t read this novel to get to a particular destination (although it does have an ending consistent with both the prodigal son and ageing parents non-plots) but to enjoy the company along the way.
Anne Tyler is one of the grande dames of American literature, having published nineteen other novels over the last fifty years. Her characters live and breathe from the moment you meet them on the page. They’re deeply flawed, but rarely malicious, and she dispenses difficulties among them with a wry humour. For example, in A Spool of Blue Thread, Abby and her daughters bend over backwards to welcome Denny’s new wife, who is clearly not their type, for a Christmas visit (p26):
They complimented every single thing about Carla they could think of, including the tattoo of her dog’s name in the bend of her left arm.
She’s in her element exposing the small tensions of family life (p117):
The Whitshanks held two opposing opinions about what to do with their wakeful hours, and they had long ago argued the subject into the ground.
While I enjoyed meeting the family over the three generations they lived in the house, as deeper and deeper secrets were revealed, the scant plot meant I didn’t rate it as highly as other novels of hers I’ve read. And the son-in-law’s plan to establish a travel agency for hyper-anxious travellers like his cousin (p111):
She packs everything, for every possible eventuality. She thinks her house mysteriously senses that she’s about to leave it; she says that just hours before a trip it will spring a leak or develop a sewage backup or a malfunction in the burglar alarm. The instruction she writes for the dog sitter are practically novels. She starts to suspect her cat has diabetes.
had me yearning to read The Accidental Tourist, my all-time favourite, once more.
Savour this novel for the fine writing and beautiful characterisation but, if you haven’t come across Anne Tyler before, you might be better off meeting her first in one of her earlier novels. (Alternatively, in addition, check out this excellent review from Eric Anderson, The Lonesome Reader, which I came across after I’d drafted mine. He identifies Anne Tyler’s novels as being about the horrific fear underlying genteel middle-class Baltimore life; in A Spool of Blue Thread that fear is about the discovery that everything the family relies on was acquired on the sly.) Thanks to Chatto and Windus for my review copy.
I wasn’t going to mention Red’s sister, Merrick, but, given that Charli Mills is calling for 99-word stories about nutty aunts, I decided to give her character another think. She’s probably the least happy of the family, having stolen her best friend’s boyfriend in order to marry into wealth, and never seems entirely comfortable on her fleeting visits to the family home. But I feel it’s more in keeping with the spirit of Anne Tyler to base my own flash around my long-dead quirky aunt whose name I’ve given to the mother in Sugar and Snails (although my aunt was much nicer). It’s more memoir (which you know is not my thing) than fiction, more sketch than story, but here goes:
Your green shoes damned convention. You read everything from cereal packets to Tolstoy with the print barely inches from your eyes. Faddy new diets swallowed your widow’s pension, yet you baked for days before our visits, your table groaning with scones, seed cake and gingerbread, as if you liked our noise descending on your home.
Your friend was a clown in a circus; he sent you postcards from his tours. Your favourite dress still hangs in my wardrobe, though, even at sixteen, I couldn’t do up the zip.
I wish I could ask if you wore it for him.
They complimented every single thing about Carla they could think of, including the tattoo of her dog’s name in the bend of her left arm.
She’s in her element exposing the small tensions of family life (p117):
The Whitshanks held two opposing opinions about what to do with their wakeful hours, and they had long ago argued the subject into the ground.
While I enjoyed meeting the family over the three generations they lived in the house, as deeper and deeper secrets were revealed, the scant plot meant I didn’t rate it as highly as other novels of hers I’ve read. And the son-in-law’s plan to establish a travel agency for hyper-anxious travellers like his cousin (p111):
She packs everything, for every possible eventuality. She thinks her house mysteriously senses that she’s about to leave it; she says that just hours before a trip it will spring a leak or develop a sewage backup or a malfunction in the burglar alarm. The instruction she writes for the dog sitter are practically novels. She starts to suspect her cat has diabetes.
had me yearning to read The Accidental Tourist, my all-time favourite, once more.
Savour this novel for the fine writing and beautiful characterisation but, if you haven’t come across Anne Tyler before, you might be better off meeting her first in one of her earlier novels. (Alternatively, in addition, check out this excellent review from Eric Anderson, The Lonesome Reader, which I came across after I’d drafted mine. He identifies Anne Tyler’s novels as being about the horrific fear underlying genteel middle-class Baltimore life; in A Spool of Blue Thread that fear is about the discovery that everything the family relies on was acquired on the sly.) Thanks to Chatto and Windus for my review copy.
I wasn’t going to mention Red’s sister, Merrick, but, given that Charli Mills is calling for 99-word stories about nutty aunts, I decided to give her character another think. She’s probably the least happy of the family, having stolen her best friend’s boyfriend in order to marry into wealth, and never seems entirely comfortable on her fleeting visits to the family home. But I feel it’s more in keeping with the spirit of Anne Tyler to base my own flash around my long-dead quirky aunt whose name I’ve given to the mother in Sugar and Snails (although my aunt was much nicer). It’s more memoir (which you know is not my thing) than fiction, more sketch than story, but here goes:
Your green shoes damned convention. You read everything from cereal packets to Tolstoy with the print barely inches from your eyes. Faddy new diets swallowed your widow’s pension, yet you baked for days before our visits, your table groaning with scones, seed cake and gingerbread, as if you liked our noise descending on your home.
Your friend was a clown in a circus; he sent you postcards from his tours. Your favourite dress still hangs in my wardrobe, though, even at sixteen, I couldn’t do up the zip.
I wish I could ask if you wore it for him.
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