BUSH TELEGRAPH

Book review – Annece Winton
Need something to
read?
A Spool of Blue Thread
by Anne Tyler
This title will be in the bookshops in May 2015
Many of us are familiar with the writings of Anne
Tyler as she has brought us entertaining reads
such as The Beginners Goodbye, The Amateur
Marriage, Accidental Marriage and Digging to
America to name just a few of her 19 previous
novels. These novels all look at family life and
are set in Baltimore. Her latest novel “A Spool
of Blue Thread” is no exception.
Picture a middle class American family, as we
meet four generations of the Whitshank family
However happiness eludes them. When Junior,
the founder of this family, who is in construction,
sees the plans of a home he is commissioned
to build for a businessman, he sets his
heart on the home and constructs it to his own
high standards and through some mild chicanery
eventually acquires the home.
Junior is entrapped by a girl half his age who
bides her time and eventually gets her man.
They have two children, Redcliffe their son and
Merrick their daughter. Merrick is the kind of
girl who sets her desires on her best friend’s
beau whom she is delighted to see comes from
the upper echelons of Baltimore society. While
Merrick escapes, her brother Red takes over the
family construction business and marries Abby
who is the self-depreciating type. It is this
couple who we get to know best as the family
slowly fall apart.
The novel opens when Denny their son, calls
late one evening to tell Red and Abby he is gay (
he is not) and puts the phone down before they
can ask any questions. Denny is a college dropout,
irregularly employed and an unmarried and
mostly missing father. He is a nomad with no
fixed abode and usually out of reach. No one,
not his parents or his two sisters or his younger
adopted brother can cope with his erratic behaviour
let alone his occasional homecomings.
His older sister Amanda confronts him with a
list of his domestic neglect and shortcomings.
But the real reason for his sibling’s angst is that
he has “consumed every last drop of his parent’s
attention and left nothing for the rest of
us”.
When Red starts going deaf and then has a
heart attack and Abby’s brain starts to “jump
the track” the family come together to take over
their care. Predictably the “good” son Stem and
his wife Nora move into the family home to care
for their parents, and no sooner have they done
so when the prodigal son, Denny, reappears to
take on the responsibility. It is in this situation
that we witness resentment, guilt and long buried
jealousies as the siblings vie for control.
However in the end, goodness triumphs over
wickedness and there is no place like home,
even if it is not quite perfect.
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