Each month we choose a newly released book that we feel is perfect for a book club. Then we roadtest it. Here are some notes from our own book club discussion of Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread.

WARNING: This blog post contains spoilers. To read a spoiler-free discussion of the book, please click here.

On the novel’s unusual structure:

I think if this book had been traditionally structured in chronological order and begun with the relationship of Red’s parents in the 1920s I would have found these characters less interesting. Because Junior and Linnie Mae were the forebears of characters I already knew so well, this section was much more bearable when it came towards the end of the book than I think it would have been were it at the beginning. I say more bearable because for me this was the least interesting section of the book, perhaps because these characters get less time than the others and are therefore more one dimensional. That being said, I do think the book is better for having this section and if it hadn’t been there at all some of the poignancy in the portrayal of an aging Red and Abby as it relates to all of us throughout time would have been lost. – Kara Nicholson

There’s a sudden death halfway through the story. At that point I had to put the book down and take in the loss of that character. I didn’t understand why Tyler had taken my favourite character away and I was pretty annoyed about it. By the end of the book I admired her decision. Death is just the end of your own life but it happens inconveniently in the middle of things for everyone else. I thought the flashbacks (to the courtship of the two main older characters, and even further back to their parents) were essential to my overall picture of the family dynamics and I couldn’t think of an alternative way of telling the story that would have worked better. So, although the structure unsettled me, I felt it was right. – Emily Gale

Even though I enjoyed reading them, the two flashbacks just didn’t work for me. When I came across the first one I was jolted right out of a story that I’d been happily and deeply invested in and even though I think I understand what Tyler was intending by these flashbacks (to demonstrate how the stories we tell about our lives are just that, stories), I think she could’ve done this in a more sophisticated way. As it was, they felt like interruptions to me as opposed to complementary parts. All this aside, I thought Tyler did a fantastic job with the reveals in the main narrative section. The revelation that Stem (Douglas) was adopted was unexpected yet satisfying, changing my interpretation of what I’d just read. Likewise, the sudden death of Abby shocked me but didn’t feel unnecessary or unnatural. – Bronte Coates

To go back in time, to delve into the past is what makes Tyler’s work always contextual and historically accurate. I like to read the personal stories of history and Tyler does make this all appear easy. I reckon the structure was interesting and an effective way of sharing generational stories. – Chris Gordon

I enjoyed the flashbacks. I found Junior and Linnie Mae’s story to be bleakly disturbing and it greatly affected me. Saying that, I think maybe I would have preferred to have spent more time with Abby (I loved Abby!) and her children, than delve into the back story of her in-laws. But that’s missing the point of what Tyler was trying to do – her novel was about three generations of a family, and the stories that shaped them. – Nina Kenwood

On Anne Tyler’s portrayal of relationships between family members:

As I just said, I loved Abby and I liked all her children, except Denny, who I loathed for a lot of the book. Tyler made me emphasise with him, particularly in the last third of the book, but I wanted to slap him many times in the first half. I generally always feel this way in an Anne Tyler novel, adoring some characters and getting very cross with others. – Nina Kenwood

I also loved Abby. Tyler’s portrait of this woman, from her early years to the very end, was powerful and I liked how she was romantic, possessive, generous, devoted and annoying all at once. All the elements of the Whitshank family – the ageing parents, the fights between siblings, the crowded houses and the practicalities of mealtimes seemed very accurate to me. I felt quite sad for Red and actually would have preferred the novel to end with him reflecting on his past as opposed to Big Bad Denny. – Chris Gordon

I loved Anne Tyler’s family portrait. The dynamics she created were as unsettling as the structure (in a good way). She had the errant son, Denny, holding every single one of his family to ransom. They never understood why he was so angry, or why, as his mother wondered, he was always trying to escape them. Or indeed why they all carried on watching what they said to him, for years, fearing he’d walk out the door and never come back. Nothing was ever discussed between them to a satisfactory conclusion. I don’t know about your families but I felt like that was entirely accurate! What Anne Tyler has to say about families is part-bleak (your family will never really understand you), part-funny (you might as well laugh or you’ll cry), and part-hopeful in the sense that outside of that small family unit (ageing parents and four grown-up siblings) everyone had another life that they could retreat to, where they could breathe a little differently. – Emily Gale

On how A Spool of Blue Thread compares to previous works by Anne Tyler:

I’d previously read A Patchwork Planet and The Accidental Tourist, both of which I loved in my twenties, and since reading A Spool of Blue Thread I’ve bought Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (after reading that it was Anne Tyler’s favourite of her books) and Breathing Lessons. When I start one of her books I have this sense that she’s very much in charge of me – that she’s this incredibly wise person who says to me in a laid-back, confident tone, ‘Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story’, and from then on, I’m absolutely under her spell. – Emily Gale

This was my first Anne Tyler and I was blown away by her ability to portray intricate details that make up a family – the tiny power struggles, the conflicting stories and interpretations, the shared language. I’ll definitely be seeking out another book by her. – Bronte Coates

I’ve read Ladder of Years, The Amateur Marriage, Breathing Lessons and Back When We Were Grown Ups. The Amateur Marriage was the first Tyler I ever read, and it remains my favourite, perhaps for sentimental reasons (that’s where I fell in love with her writing) and also because it made me cry, and it’s stayed with me. I can still draw to mind the two main characters, and certain things that happened to them. A Spool of Blue Thread is very much an Anne Tyler novel in quality and tone, although I would say it’s a little looser and baggier than her others, which I found to be more tightly plotted. I love them all, of course. – Nina Kenwood

For some reason Anne Tyler is an author that I’ve never felt compelled to read and while I’m sure I have read The Accidental Tourist, I don’t remember anything about it. Before starting A Spool of Blue Thread I had a look through some of her older titles (I had no idea how prolific she is) and randomly chose A Patchwork Planet to read. It took me a little while to warm to but before long I was charmed by Barnaby, the misfit main character, and loving his complex and hilarious relationship with his family. There are a lot of similarities between A Spool of Blue Thread’s Denny and Barnaby: both are the black sheep of their middle class families whom they disdain but ultimately return to again and again. Both books also explore aging as Barnaby’s job as a dogsbody for a number of elderly residents in his neighbourhood gives him often heartbreaking insights into the aging process. I think A Patchwork Planet is a more interesting book than A Spool of Blue Thread but that’s not to say the latter is not worth reading, especially if you’re a Tyler fan. To be honest I probably won’t read any more Tyler even though I do think she is fantastic at portraying family relationships and creating complex, recognisable characters. I suppose I feel as though anything else would be more of the same (which I never think with authors I really love) but I’d happily be proven wrong! – Kara Nicholson

On our favourite moments:

I loved Abby’s struggles with her children, and particularly her sons, Stem and Denny. I love this quote: “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?” – Nina Kenwood

I keep on quoting this section to people: "But like most families, they imagined they were special. … At times they made a little too much of the family quirks – of both Amanda and Jeannie marrying men named Hugh, for instance, so that their husbands were referred to as ‘Amanda’s Hugh’ and ‘Jeannie’s Hugh’; or their genetic predisposition for lying awake two hours in the middle of every night; or their uncanny ability to keep their dogs alive for eons.” – Bronte Coates

My favourite quote from the book, or rather, my favourite story is the one on that breezy and yellow green day when Abby thinks of the Wicked Witch from the West saying, ‘What a world, what a world’, and then she chooses Red. – Chris Gordon