Book – A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

I picked this to take with me on my recent trip as it has a Canadian connection.  I found Digging for America hugely reduced on the last day in Montreal in 2009. I’d not come across the author before but it’s not unusual for me not to have read books other book fans are extremely familiar with, even when they have blossomed into films. Or when they have won awards.I wanted to buy the autographed New York by Edward Rutherfurd – possibly an all-time favourite – that was sitting next to it. But could not carry the 1017 pages in my luggage. So this lighter hard-back came with me, and I read it years later.This was similarly bought on impulse; in January, I found myself in Southampton for the weekend without my book and picked this at the bookstore. I tend to borrow books from library these days, having given away nearly all of books a few years ago. I only buy afterwards if I love them and if they come autographed. Although I may not do that anymore since learning that authors do actually get paid a little each time there book it is borrowed from a library.Once again this has family theme, with four generations of Whitshanks featured. Bizarrely, but not distractively, the first generation only come into view towards the end when the author jumps right back to 1920s America and we learn how it all began.Like the other book I bought on the same day, Jenny Éclair’s Moving, this centres around a family home although with not as many secrets. Indeed the mysteries that unfold are perhaps not the ones we expect. Nonetheless, it carries what I now understand is the Tyler trait, which is to be so descriptive that you are there, right in the middle of the living room.