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Book Review of A Spool of Blue Thread

A Spool of Blue Thread
A Spool of Blue Thread
Author: Anne Tyler
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Hardcover
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3 generations of Whitshanks, a family without a history, have lived in the upscale neighborhood in Baltimore. Built by the family-owned construction company, the family home figures greatly in the book. In the present day, the family has gathered to take care of the mother, who has been having mental lapses. This is a realistic family of people who do not quite mesh, who nurse grievances, have misunderstandings and random events that move things along. Neither literature, or chick-lit, but rather in-between, the book ambles along with seemingly random happenings and, the spool of the title is never quite understood. It falls out of a closet, is mentioned and forgotten. However, when we begin to think on these random events and the spool, the story does come together. The reader must make those connections. The strength of the book is the charectarizations, which create real people one could know. For me the book is neither here nor there. a 2.5 for sure.