Read our January Monthly Spotlight: A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
To kick off 2025, we revisit Anne Tyler's 20th novel, 10 years after it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Read an extract and our reading guide, and win a bundle of books by the author
January is here, and we’re gently easing ourselves back into the rhythm of reading with a family drama to begin the year. This month, we invite you to join us in reading – or revisiting – Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread, a novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015.
Set in Roland Park, Baltimore – the neighbourhood Tyler herself called home since 2008 – the story unfolds across three generations of the Whitshank family. It opens with a familiar family scene: everyone gathered on the porch, half-listening as their mother recounts a tale they’ve all heard countless times before. But this gathering feels different, as difficult decisions loom about their future and the fate of their beloved home.
The beating heart of this story is this very family home. ‘It seemed the house was as real to me as any of the people in it,’ Tyler remarked in a 2015 interview with The Guardian. From this vantage, Tyler reflects on generational change, aspiration, and the quiet inevitabilities of life’s ebb and flow. ‘I don’t have murder mysteries, suspense or real events. I rely on time to do my plotting: people having babies, marrying, dying – just normal things that happen,’ she said.
‘Her terrain is the family, and the micro-interactions between both its members and interlopers from without’ noted Alex Clark, in a review of the novel for The Guardian in 2015, adding that Tyler’s ‘tone is superficially uncomplicated, her insights cumulative, her mode of realist fiction essentially conventional.’
Tyler published her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, at just 23 years old. A Spool of Blue Thread was her 20th novel, and she continues to write into her 80s, with a new novel, Three Days in June, set to be published in February this year. She has sold over eight million copies of her books worldwide.
For more insights into A Spool of Blue Thread, visit our Monthly Spotlight page. There, you can read an extract from the novel and explore our comprehensive reading guide. Plus, don’t miss the chance to win a bundle of Tyler’s books in our latest competition.
We’d love to hear your thoughts, too. Share your reflections in the comments below or join the conversation on our social channels. Happy reading!
Read an extract from A Spool of Blue Thread
'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon...' This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer's day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.
From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family.
Discover our reading guide to the novel
Whether you’re new to A Spool of Blue Thread or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, discover more with our comprehensive guide, which includes a synopsis, character summaries, critics’ comments and a range of discussion points for book clubs.
Win a bundle of Anne Tyler’s books and a newly designed Booker Prize tote bag
To celebrate our Monthly Spotlight for January, we are giving you the chance to win a bundle of novels by the author, plus a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag, featuring a new design for 2025. The bundle includes A Spool of Blue Thread, French Braid, Redhead by the Side of the Road, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist.
To be in with a chance of winning the set, head over to the Booker Prizes website and enter your details by 12:00 GMT on Friday, January 31, 2025. This competition is open to readers anywhere in the world.
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