Book Review: A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Vintage, £7.99)

Anne Tyler’s latest novel is a stylish saga focusing on the Whitshanks, Baltimore builders for three generations. Retired social worker Abby and her husband Red—still climbing roofs in his sixties—are puzzling over their itinerant son Denny, who can’t hold down a job. He once announced he was gay but never mentioned it again, later marrying and arriving on the doorstep with a baby daughter before resuming radio silence. Now he and his three siblings have returned to the nest to care for…