Anne Tyler’s back doing what Anne Tylers do best: being a nicer, better, more experienced, less pointlessly antagonistic version of Jonathan Franzen. In A Spool of Blue Thread, she brings us another example of what I call the “family epic”: a novel tracing the history of a family – in this case, the Whitshank family, from the Depression up to the present day. Because it’s Tyler, these events take place in Baltimore.
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Macon Leary* is a man who craves order, but suddenly his life is spinning out of control. His son has been killed; his wife has left him; he’s broken his leg; even his dog has developed alarming behavioural problems. On top of all this, a stranger has entered his life in the person of a dog trainer who seems determined to involve herself in his life, a life which he strives to keep unattached to strangers.
Continue reading The Accidental Tourist
