A spool of blue thread : a novel

Format:

Audio disc

Title:

A spool of blue thread : a novel

Author:

Tyler, Anne.

ISBN:

9780553551037

9780553551051

9781524754679

Edition:

Unabridged.

Publication Information:

Publication:

[Westminster, MD] : Books on Tape ; New York : Random House Audio, [2015]

Physical Description:

11 audio discs (13 1/2 hr.) ; 4 3/4 in.

General Note:

Compact discs.

Summary:

The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves 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. Tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity.

Subject(s):

Aging parents -- Fiction.

Families -- Fiction.

Family secrets -- Fiction.

Inheritance and succession -- Fiction.

Grandparents -- Fiction.

Storytelling -- Fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Baltimore (Md.) -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Baltimore (Md.) -- Fiction.

Maryland -- Baltimore

Genre:

Love stories.

General.

Romance fiction

Psychological fiction

Domestic fiction

Audiobooks

Fiction

Psychological fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Audiobooks.

Added Author:

Farr, Kimberly.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... McMinnville Public Library	Tyler, A.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dallas Public Library	CD - TYLER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Independence Public Library	CD FICTION - TYLER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Monmouth Public Library	CD FIC TYLER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Newberg Public Library	FICTION TYLER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Salem Main Library	CD FICTION Tyler	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Silver Falls Library	CD TYLER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stayton Public Library	TYLER, Anne	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . ." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves 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 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, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler's work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.

Author Notes

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 25, 1941. She graduated from Duke University at the age of 19 and completed graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a librarian and bibliographer.

Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964. Her other works include Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups, Digging to America, Noah's Compass, The Beginner's Goodbye, A Spool of Blue Thread, and Vinegar Girl. She has won several awards including the PEN Faulkner Award in 1983 for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, the 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist, and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons. The Accidental Tourist was adapted into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. In 2018 her title, Clock Dance, made the bestsellers list.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

New York Review of Books Review

CORRUPTION IN AMERICA: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United, by Zephyr Teachout. (Harvard University, $18.95.) The founding fathers were deeply concerned with the threat corruption posed to their emergent government. Teachout, a Fordham law professor, powerfully argues that their commitment to safeguarding against it has been undermined by the Supreme Court since at least the 1970s - especially in the realm of corporations' financial contributions to politics. I REFUSE, by Per Petterson. Translated by Don Bartlett. (Graywolf, $16.) The two men at the heart of this story, Tommy and Jim, rediscover each other after decades apart, and marvel at the divergent paths their lives took. Petterson, the Norwegian novelist who wrote "Out Stealing Horses," examines the forces that pulled "the boys in different directions, the small quiet moments that forged their friendship and then pulled it apart," Harriet Lane wrote here. BARBARIAN DAYS: A Surfing Life, by William Finnegan. (Penguin, $17.) Finnegan, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for autobiography, recalls his shifting relationship to the sport: As an adolescent, he found in surfing a respite from the petty cruelties of middle school in Hawaii; later, it led him to join hordes of young surfers across the world in search of the ideal wave. THE INCARNATIONS, by Susan Barker. (Touchstone, $16.) In the taxi he drives in contemporary Beijing, Wang Jun finds a series of mysterious letters - signed by writers who claim to be his soul mate - that link him to five key episodes across 1,500 years of Chinese history. Barker's wildly inventive novel reveals Wang's previous roles, in the form of his earlier lives, in each of those moments from his country's past. THE BROTHERS: The Road to an American Tragedy, by Masha Gessen. (Riverhead, $16.) From their childhoods in Central Asia and Russia to their early days in the United States, Gessen pieces together the lives of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two Chechen immigrants responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013. A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD, by Anne Tyler. (Ballantine, $16.) Tyler's novel chronicles the multigenerational Whitshanks, who remain anchored to their family home in Baltimore, and the celebrations, secrets and joys that stitch them together. "Tyler has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving," our reviewer, Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, wrote. LISTENING TO STONE: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, by Hayden Herrera. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25.) This illuminating biography of the sculptor (1904-88) traces his early influences - as the son of a distant Japanese father and mercurial American mother, Noguchi rarely felt at home, and was shaped by his diverse travels. Herrera's account is a fitting companion guide to the artist who "sought and found, by making sculpture, a way to embed himself in the earth, in nature, in the world."

Library Journal Review

This contemporary chronicle spools around Abby and Red Whitshank, then looping back to Red's parents and forward to a third generation and their young broods. The family seat is a Baltimore home lovingly built for a wealthy client by Red's father, who eventually claims it for himself by unnerving the original owners. The cunning builder describes his masterwork as "simple but impeccably built," itself an apt characterization of Pulitzer Prize winner Tyler's (The Accidental Tourist) writing. Baltimore families are Tyler's trademark, and she renders mundane activities and conversations into a bittersweet tableau of love, family ties, and heartache. Kimberly Farr's performance lets the story shine. VERDICT Tyler's latest novel will leave her fans and other listeners of contemporary fiction awed and satisfied. ["It's been half a century since Tyler debuted [and] she continues to dazzle with this multigenerational saga, which glides back and forth in time with humor and heart and a pragmatic wisdom that comforts and instructs": LJ 2/1/15 starred review of the Knopf hc.]-Judith Robinson, Dept. of Lib. & Information Studies, Univ. at Buffalo © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.