After many years of playing with his children and getting involved, one year the father of this family is seen only on the porch with a blanket over him. There is a sad commentary upon the social norms of privacy and reserve, norms that are in part reinforced by the perceived boundaries of the family unit, demonstrated through the Whitshanks’ lack of connection with a family whom they spend their holidays next to every year. Secrets emerge that at times fracture and at times consolidate the Whitshanks’ sense of identity.
The novel also questions what constitutes a family. But Denny’s apparent haphazard employment situation, unreliability and attitude leaves the rest of the family nonplussed and sometimes angry. Red and Abby hold the traditional values of working for a living and enjoying some comfort as the reward, values shared by most of their offspring. Red and his family inherit the house, which, like the slightly worn runner of the opening pages and the family itself, symbolises stability and endurance while exhibiting signs of storms weathered. is eventually able to live in the Baltimore house we witness the pains he goes through to secure the appearance of his “new” social status, and those he puts his wife and children through. We hear of Red’s father, a tradesman desperate to better himself, who is obsessed with a house he built for a man of higher social standing. Tyler traces the lines of a recognisable tradition in American fiction by exploring the illusionary nature of the American dream, the idea that progress can be made by anyone by means of hard work. The novel touches on the lives of four generations of the Whitshank family, exploring issues related to generational change and aspiration. From this image alone, we begin to get a sense of Abby as a seasoned worrier, concerned with the problems of her family. Such descriptions are typical of Tyler’s novel her language feels unforced, gently rippling with meaning.
Abby’s character and the Whitshanks’ home are neatly captured as we observe her “pacing back and forth, up and down the Persian runner that was worn nearly white in the middle from all the times she had paced it before”. We visualise Abby’s “no-color chenille that had once been pink” we’re there as she subsequently questions Red on the content of the conversation. Tyler’s characterisation and her attention to descriptive detail are perfect: from the very opening of the novel we’re transported into the time and place of the story, eavesdropping with Abby Whitshank on one side of a telephone conversation between her husband Red and their 19-year-old son, Denny. It spans across several generations, taking in one family’s secrets and losses, its changes and constancy. Anne Tyler’s Booker short-listed A Spool of Blue Thread is an exquisite meditation on family life.
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