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Jump to navigationJump to searchA Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (view source)
Revision as of 15:51, 29 August 2020
, 15:51, 29 August 2020no edit summary
'''Shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize'''
Every family has its tales which are told and retold and in the Whitshank family it was the story of how Abby and Red had fallen in love one ''beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon'' in July 1959. It would usually be told on the porch of the Baltimore house which Red's father had built, but on this final time of its telling the circumstances are different. Abby and Red are aging ageing - even the glorious house is beginning to show its age - and decisions have to be made about how to look after them. All the family are there, even Denny, who can generally be relied on to do only what pleases him.
From that moment we spool backwards through the generations, savouring the moments which made the people as individuals and family as a whole what it is. We first meet Denny at second hand, so to speak, as he phones home and tells his father that he's gay. Red can be critical of his son, but Denny has a habit of dropping in and out of family life as the whim takes him - but is also quick to resent the family's suggestion that he's unreliable. He's one of four children - Amanda automatically takes charge, there's more to Jeannie than meets the eye and then there's Stem, who's the focus of much of Denny's resentment as it looks as though Stem is going to be the automatic heir to the family construction business. Denny ''knows'' that he could have done the work: after all he once did some work for a similar firm and would have stuck at it if it hadn't got a bit boring.
