National Bestseller
A New York Times Bestseller
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2015
Nominated for the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

“Graceful and capacious. . . . Quintessential Anne Tyler, as well as quintessential American comedy. Tyler has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving. Her great gift is playing against the American dream." ―The New York Times Book Review

"[Tyler] exudes tremendous skill and precision. . . . Tyler's narrative is a brilliant testament to why the novel still provides an enormously important role in our culture, allowing us to capture the little bits of humanity that somehow seem to bypass us in the real world. . . . [A] noble artistic vision." ―Toronto Star
 
"Tyler's oeuvre has been praised consistently for its multifaceted portrayals of domestic American life. . . . Tyler knits life-defining moments and everyday observances together here in her prose, which is as vivid and comforting as ever." ―Maclean's

"Anne Tyler delivers all you expect and more. . . . [A Spool of Blue Thread] hits all the high notes. . . . [It is] a truly authentic look at modern day American families. . . . This book felt like a summer novel perfectly timed to break up the winter blues." —Huffington Post

"[An] airy saga. . . . [with] warm, lucid prose." —The New Yorker

"This is a book full of surprises. . . . No one is better than Tyler at making loving, awkward, real family scenes; even the bit-part players are wonderful. . . . the story is leavened with Tyler’s never-less-than-perfect humour." —Financial Times (UK)

"Anne Tyler’s artistry has become so assured and invisible that her books often read less like fiction than dispatches from the real world. . . . Expertly staged." ―Los Angeles Times

"Tyler’s 20th novel . . . beautifully interweaves the profound and the everyday." —The Seattle Times

"A Spool of Blue Thread gives fans one more reason to love Anne Tyler. . . . [this book] deserves to stand among Tyler’s best writing." —Christian Science Monitor

"Fresh and compelling . . . [The characters] will be special to readers thanks to the extraordinary richness and delicacy with which Tyler limns complex interactions and mixed feelings familiar to us all and yet marvelously particular to the empathetically rendered members of the Whitshank clan. The texture of everyday experience transmuted into art." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"[H]ow can it be so wonderful? . . . what’s familiar seems transcended in these pages, infused with freshness and surprise." ―Washington Post
 
"We can only hope that Tyler will continue spooling out her colorful Baltimore tales for a long time to come." ―NPR
 
"[Tyler] continues to dazzle with this multigenerational saga, which glides back and forth in time with humor and heart and a pragmatic wisdom that comforts and instructs." ―Library Journal, starred review
 
"Thoroughly enjoyable. . . . [Tyler's] a gifted and engrossing storyteller." ―Publishers Weekly
 
"Tyler is as fleet and graceful as a skater, her prose as transparent as ice. . . . Tyler's long dedication to language and story [is] an artistic practice made perfect in this charming, funny, and shrewd novel of the paradoxes of self, family, and home." ―Booklist, starred review
 
"[Her novels] have earned Tyler a Pulitzer Prize and comparisons to Southern greats such as Eudora Welty. Her indelible portrait of the Whitshank household deserves the same plaudits." ―Elle Magazine
 
"A new novel from Tyler is always a treat and this is her best in years. . . . discover a family saga with reverberations for us all." ―Daily Mail (UK)