Review: A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

“Why was he always so eager to exchange his family for someone else’s?”

A Spool of Blue Thread was my introduction to Anne Tyler in 2018. Since then I’ve read eight of her books; each contains its own gem.

Her writing shines the brightest in this book. The first chapter still hurts as much even on the second reread. It’s very fast-paced which is a great way to get sucked into the family dynamics, compared to the slowness of Tyler’s Noah’s compass and even Clock Dance, I could see why this was her most beloved novel. She shines the most here. On nearly every page I had something to note down that I appreciated observing through her watchful keen eyes and unexpected slants of vision.

A simple example of using language with meaning: “but it had the comfortably shabby air of a place whose inhabitants had long ago stopped seeing it.”

With that wording, she clicked something into place in my mind. I realized what it was I was seeing around me, things I’d long ago stopped noticing. Her writing makes you stop and really see the world around you. That’s why I gravitate toward her books.

The first chapter is like a whole mini story with Denny as the star, or rather his absence.

“It wasn’t right, Abby said. They hadn’t had him long enough. Children were supposed to stick around till eighteen, at the very least. (The girls hadn’t moved away even for college.) “It’s like he’s been stolen from us,” she told Red. “He was taken before his time!”

I felt her hurt acutely, similar to the sorrow felt in of Everything I Never Told You
wanting back what once was with a despairing “please.” I want to linger on this first chapter because it voiced so much.

“And whenever he did come home, he was a stranger. He had a different smell, no longer the musty-closet smell but something almost chemical, like new carpeting. He wore a Greek sailor’s cap that Abby (a product of the sixties) associated with the young Bob Dylan. And he spoke to his parents politely, but distantly. Did he resent them for shipping him off? But they hadn’t had a choice! No, his grudge must have gone farther back. ”

This worded precisely my hurt. This person who you look up to so much simply tolerates you now that they’ve changed, almost too much that you nearly don’t recognize them anymore.
And this unspooling of threads, looking at where it all went wrong and wanting to catch it before it all falls apart. This is why I read these books with introspective telltales, to have someone go inside my head and guide me through what I went through. Give it words and thus have the joy of putting into words the unwordable. Jonathan Safran Foer and Matan Yair excel at this, too.

I also came to appreciate the dynamic shown how siblings have a different connection than parents and children. Like his sister could get more out of Denny than his mother could.

“For weeks at a time he might call every Sunday until they grew to expect it, almost depend on it, but then he’d fall silent for months and they had no means of reaching him.”

Becoming hopeful on having him back in their lives. They’re starved for details of his life because that’s all they have to think of for months to come.

Anne Tyler paints a picture with the minute details that you forget with time doing its thing of deleting the details of the trauma to smooth over the hurt in order to function and not dwell on the past.

The first chapter charmed me, and in my memory from my first read, it was a sprawling story. But rereading and seeing it barely hits the 50 pages, left me a bit shocked. That’s where Anne Tyler’s magic enters. Every time I left a chapter wanting more and more, we’d get a sneak into someone else’s life and my hunger would satisfy.

“She liked to snuggle next to Abby and sound out the words to Hop on Pop, heaving a loud sigh of satisfaction whenever she finished a page.
By the time she left, she’d lost all her reserve. She stood in front of the train station holding Denny’s hand, waving like a maniac and shouting, “Bye-bye! See you! See everybody soon! Bye-bye!”

This is so observant because this passage plucked out a memory of mine as if she’s taken it from my mind herself. Anne Tyler knows so much. How does she remember so much, both the detail of the hurt caused by being left behind and the details of little kids and how they interact with the world?
She notices everything.

“How shocking, Abby told Red, that they were willing to settle for so little. She said, “Would you have believed it? Sometimes whole days go by when I don’t give him a thought. This is just not natural!”

This is the same hurt David Sheff wrote in his book about his son. Like we spent so many years together, watched him grow, used to watch him sleep, and now we’re settling for so little…

“It was really very hard to visualize Denny’s personal life.”

Like he’s on pause and only exists when in front of them because he doesn’t share when he’s away.
There’s a quote in the second chapter that perfectly worded this, how the memories are told from Junior’s POV so, of course, a scene stops existing as soon as he’s not a character in the scene.

“It almost seemed that when Junior left a scene, it had ceased to exist. Then he returned and everything started up again, brought to life by his whiny, thin voice and “He says to me …” and “Says I, I says …”

She paints a picture with her words.

Can you tell I can’t get enough of Anne Tyler’s writing? I love it for giving words to what can’t be clearly explained in words.

“But still, you know how it is when you’re missing a loved one. You try to turn every stranger into the person you were hoping for. You hear a certain piece of music and right away you tell yourself that he could have changed his clothing style, could have gained a ton of weight, could have acquired a car and then parked that car in front of another family’s house. “It’s him!” you say. “He came! We knew he would; we always …” But then you hear how pathetic you sound, and your words trail off into silence, and your heart breaks.”

This. This is why I read Anne Tyler. This packed the biggest punch. This is the perfect example to show to someone wondering what the hype is behind Anne Tyler’s books. This paragraph says so much.

Chapter two is about finally getting the house you dreamt of.

Anne Tyler was like let’s combine all my hurts in one book. She knows her audience well.

• Hurt of neglecting older brother
• Hurt of strangers living in your house

“So “this house” really meant “this family,” it seemed. The two were one and the same.”

The house symbolized their family!!

“One thing was a puzzle, though: despite Junior’s reported loquaciousness, his grandchildren never formed a very clear picture of him. Who was he, exactly? Where had he come from? For that matter, where had Linnie come from? Surely Red had some inkling—or his sister, more likely, since women were supposed to be more curious about such things. But no, they claimed they didn’t. (If they were to be believed.) And both Junior and Linnie were dead before their first grandchild turned two.
Also: was Junior insufferable, or was he likable? Bad, or good? The answer seemed to vary. On the one hand, his ambition was an embarrassment to all of them. They winced when they heard how slavishly he aped his social superiors. But when they considered his pinched circumstances, his nose-pressed-to-the-window wistfulness, and his dedication—his genius, in fact—they had to say, “Well …”
He was like anybody else, Red said. Insufferable and likable. Bad and good.
Nobody found this a satisfactory answer.”

I thought about this for days.

This book hangs onto Abby as the thread that holds them all together. The children and grandchildren spin in her orbit. So of course, any storyline containing her as the star had me spinning around her, as well. I couldn’t get enough of her. I especially liked how we got to hear throughout the book teasing about the family tale of how Abby and Red got together so that when we finally got to their story we felt like we were in on it, in on the family riddles.

That’s what makes up a family, the language you create, the stories you share and recycle. It’s what bonds you. Taylor Swift writes: You taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else. And it lies at the heart of this book. I love how it builds on previous knowledge to make the joke or story richer.

“To a child, they must have looked like some happy, cozy club that only grown-ups could belong to.”

This line felt like watching back your own memories and seeing how you saw grown-ups as a kid and the flip of taking part in grown-up conversations as you yourself become an adult. This sentence contained both the child – the observer – and the grown-up – the observed.

“The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, “and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. ‘That’s what my experience has been,’ they say, and it gets folded in with the others—one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive.”

I could picture this so well, it felt like what I always tell myself to remember from each season as it passes.
Just like there’s a Stiefvater reading experience, there’s a Tyler reading experience.
This book nailed it on the head. All her best moments shine here.

“It was exactly like a time trip. She was bobbing along in a time machine gazing out the window at one scene after another in no particular order. At one story after another. Oh, there’d been so many stories in her life! The Whitshanks claimed to have only two; she couldn’t imagine why. Why select just a certain few stories to define yourself? Abby had a wealth of them.”

This felt so melancholy. I loved that it reminded me of Noah’s Compass, talking about old people sitting and just watching their memories for hours and passing the afternoon this way.

“The most surprising details suddenly show up again! Tiny things, infinitesimal things. The other day I all at once recalled the exact turn of the wrist that I used to give the handle of the CorningWare saucepan I got for a wedding present.”

I love her ability to paint with details. It brought to mind what she shared in her interview with the guardian: “I’m more in touch with my emotions and the visceral sensory from childhood than any other part of life.” Her ability to conjure up such specific details of life are why I’m drawn to her books time and again.
Anytime I think I might’ve reached the end of what I want to share of her writing, I find another passage I want to make sure to write down so I won’t forget. Bear with me.

“Sometimes on her walks it would strike her that of all her original family, she was the only one left. Who would ever have dreamed that she’d be traveling through the world without them? ”

This made me stop cold. What a thought. The wording of this pinpointed the terrifying realization of how what you think is forevermore cannot ever last forever and ever.

“Children with her everywhere she went. It was both comforting and wearing. “Hand? Hand?” she used to say before she crossed a street. It came to her so clearly now: the stiff-armed reach out to her side with her palm facing backward, the confident expectation of some trusting little hand grabbing hers.”

This made me recognize something I hadn’t thought of, how long it’s been since I last had to hold the hand of my little sister to cross the road. And this made me realize how for granted I took time passing. Time is a thief.

“Then after she finished her morning chores Abby sat with him on the couch and read him picture books. He liked the ones with animals in them, she could tell, because sometimes when she was about to turn a page he would reach out a hand to hold it down so he could study it a while longer.”

This and the above “hand?” scene made me sad for a moment to not have those scenes anymore once the kids you know in your life grow up out of this stage. It made me understand why people keep having more kids, to not miss out on these moments.

“She settled him in the other twin bed in Denny’s room, and after she’d drawn up the blankets she hesitated a moment and then planted a kiss on his forehead. His skin was warm and slightly sweaty, as if he’d just expended some great effort.”

I love how adults are unsure what’s the right thing to do, but for kids, these moments grant so much warmth. This scene reminded me of going on a class trip and staying away from home for the first time as a little kid and having that teacher with my favorite perfume kiss my forehead goodnight. My memories jumble together as the years go by, especially as there are more of them to hold on to, so I’d completely forgotten this memory, but Anne Tyler’s writing resurfaced old memories.

“One thing that parents of problem children never said aloud: it was a relief when the children turned out okay, but then what were the parents supposed to do with the anger they’d felt all those years?”

I wanted her to show it’ll turn out all right. I have trust in Anne Tyler to heal old wounds with her stories.

A Spool of Blue Thread is always connected to The Dutch House by Ann Patchet in my mind. Both books house the same hurts build up over time living as a family, with the family house at the center of the tale to bear witness.

Read it, gift it, lend it!!