A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I often feel more at home in an Anne Tyler novel than I do in my own life. She has confirmed in a BBC interview that this is to be her last novel, so it’s not just a horrible rumor. Well…she’s been writing superb studies of family and love and home for 50 years, so I guess she’s entitled to retire, but it still makes me sad. That’s the only way in which this last book disappoints. She is as poignant and lovingly funny as always, her characters so finely drawn I feel I know them better than I know my own family. If you’re looking for high drama look elsewhere, but if you’re looking for the extraordinarily ordinary that most of us live, you’ll be right at home in these pages and in the Whitshank house.
99 Monkeys 