I Love Anne Tyler's New Book

I don't want to give away too much.
Because I want all of Tyler's fans and some who may not know her yet to read A Spool of Blue Thread.
It just might be her best novel yet.

And it's surely her best cover ever. 

Instead of over-sharing, I'll give you a quote from near the beginning. It's about the family patriarch.

"According to Abby, who had known him since her girlhood, he had a thin, metallic voice and a twangy Southern accent, although he must have decided at some point that it would elevate his social standing if he pronounced his i's in the Northern way. In the middle of his country-sounding drawl, Abby said, a distinct, sharp i would poke forth here and there like a brier. She didn't sound entirely charmed by this trait."

(Thank you to my friend Marilyn who took me to her favorite "independent Bookstore by the Sea," THE BOOKMARK, where I spied a display of signed copies of A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD and of course had to have my own.)

Anne Tyler

Has a new book coming. What an absolutely gorgeous cover!

CLICK RIGHT HERE to read a super interview and essay from the Wall Street Journal about her and her writing.

Love this:

She treats her creativity as a leap of faith. She won’t read her reviews, worried that, good or bad, they will interfere with her work. Over her desk, where she writes novels in longhand, she keeps a quote from the poet Richard Wilbur, which reads in part: “Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind. Something will come to you.”



You might also like:

This, about her writing. 

And an Anne Tyler quote, from one of my very earliest posts:

"All really satisfying stories, I believe, can generally be described as spend-thrift... A spendthrift story has a strange way of seeming bigger than the sum of its parts; it is stuffed full; it gives the sense of possessing further information that could be divulged if called for."

The Accidental Metaphor

Re-reading THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST.
Oh, how I love Anne Tyler.

A few random descriptions to learn from.
Though the Anne Tyler bar is mighty high.

Chips of cloudy sky.

Jeans with stiff, hard seams.

The watery blindness of rain.

Exuberant hair  
(Love this! Can't you see it?)

And perhaps the best of all?
She was the sort of woman who stored her flatware intermingled.



Check out this Writer's Digest interview:
http://www.writersdigest.com/article/anne-tyler-tips/ 

Since she's long been a favorite writer of mine, I've blogged about Anne Tyler before. 
http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/2012/09/beginners-goodbye.html

Beginner's Goodbye

The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler




Such a nice book to end the summer with.
So many favorite lines, but I particularly loved this:
(Aaron musing about moving into his sister's house)

But if I just showed up with no explanation and asked for my old room back, she would think I was having a nervous breakdown or something. She would turn all motherly and there-there. She would be thrilled.

(the "thrilled" in italics. Perfect.)

Aaron's asides are spot-on. That "bear in mind she was fond of talking" sounded so authentic! Can't you just hear somebody saying that?

I love what one Goodreads reviewer said about the brevity-- 

That some readers had complained about it being too short. 

"So read it twice."

I just may.

View all my reviews

Learn from the Best

I think there might actually be a famous writer who said "Steal from the best." But I'm not stealing today. Today I'm thinking hard about this, by one of my all-time favorite writers, Anne Tyler:

All really satisfying stories, I believe, can generally be described as spend-thrift... A spendthrift story has a strange way of seeming bigger than the sum of its parts; it is stuffed full; it gives the sense of possessing further information that could be divulged if called for.

That's the ticket. It could be divulged. As long as the writer knows the backstory, the character's history, what happens off-stage, readers don't need every single detail spelled out.