The house is lovingly described, and like Tyler's novels, it's well-built, homey and unpretentious, 'a house you might see pictured on a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, plain-faced and comfortable, with the Stars and Stripes, perhaps, flying out front and a lemonade stand at the curb.' Although it was originally commissioned for a wealthy client, Red's father, Junior, poured his heart and soul into it - and finally managed to make it his own a few years later. It's the locus and symbol of the Whitshanks' connection.

On one level, Blue Thread is a love song to this house. But, she comments drolly, 'like most families, they imagined they were special,' priding themselves on quirks such as an 'uncanny ability to keep their dogs alive for eons,' and their shared fierce disapproval 'of any adult they saw wearing jeans.'

The Whitshanks still run the Baltimore construction company started in the 1930s by the family patriarch, and they still live in the lovely house with a full front porch he built in an upscale Baltimore neighborhood in 1936. And in looks, they were no more than average,' Tyler writes of her latest characters. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence. 'There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. Now in her 70s, time and its inexorable ravages have become more central to her work, pushing aside her earlier preoccupations with living the wrong life, or with the rub between the benefits of intimacy and the desire for freedom. And family life is always a long haul in Tyler's novels. Once again, her focus is on the relationships between various members of a Baltimore family - spouses, parents and children, siblings and in-laws - as they evolve over the long haul. You read, instead, for the cozy mildness, the comfort of sinking into each new warmhearted, gently wry book.Ī Spool of Blue Thread, Tyler's 20th novel, wears its domesticity proudly on its sleeve (or make that jacket). You don't read Anne Tyler to have your worldview expanded, or to be kept awake at night anxiously turning pages.

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