Family reading: "A Spool of Blue Thread" by Anne Tyler

This was the third of my 2015 Booker Prize shortlist reading list (dammit, meanwhile the 2016 shortlist is out...), and the first novel I have read by Anne Tyler. However, it is her twentieth novel - the first was written in the year of my birth, it transpires - and just a little research reveals she has carved out a niche for herself writing stories about families, generally based in her hometown, Baltimore. (Apparently, you can even do Anne Tyler tours there, probably slightly less edgy than the Wire tours also on offer.) 

 I knew none of this before embarking on the novel, so had no expectations in any particular direction, except that this would be a Bookerish book, if you see what I mean.

This is, indeed, a very family book, the tale of the Whitshank clan, centring on the couple Red and Abby, he an independent builder by trade, still at work in his eighties, she a retired social worker (still with a tendency to look after waifs and strays of all kinds) and general materfamilias to a growing extended family, two daughters and two sons, along with their partners and offspring. The main action of the novel arises out of the increasing age and frailty of Red and Abby, which persuades their children of the need to move in with them, something which will test in real life conditions the various stories this generally close-knit family tells about itself. As you might expect, all is not plain sailing, and the inner dynamics of the family emerge in various ways. 

Do not expect however outbursts of terrifying violence, bitter conflict or tragedy, for Tyler's business is to talk about families as they actually are, with underlying tensions and conflicts, yes, with rebellion and resentments along the way, but also with ties that bond, a basic solidarity, stories that bind through life's ordinary adventures, and in which people are generally decent. If that sounds like it might tip to the rather schmaltzy and sentimental, sort of The Waltons in Baltimore, then the risk is real. However, Tyler is better than that (presumably this being why she shows up on a Booker shortlist at the age of 73) and manages to describe the life of this not-so-unordinary family with incisive insight, a goodly dose of humour and with a capacity to touch deep feelings. Perhaps it is the clarity with which she observes the very ordinary challenges of life, in particular here the process of becoming old, which holds the books power. The passage of time itself, the change it brings to family members, young and old, is a central them of he novel, emphasised by long flashbacks into the lives and adventures of pre-Red-and-Abby generations, set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, as is the capacity for small, even insignificant, details of life to be the vehicle whereby the fundamental differences between people are expressed. 

Anne Tyler

I liked this book, all the while being quite surprised as to the hold it managed to exert over me. Yes, I do have, as some level, a kind of "so what?" feeling about having read it, but at the same time cannot deny that it drew me in, absorbed my interest and, yes, made me feel deeply in sympathy with these people. I'm guessing that, like many readers, this is so well observed, so wryly conscious of what really happens in families, that I feel this is my family too.