Family affairs
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Chatto and Windus, 356pp, £18.99
Anne Tyler has claimed that this, her 20th novel released in the 50th year of her career in fiction, will be her last. If it is, she has ended on a high. Once again, Tyler returns to her fictional turf: family life in the suburbs of Baltimore. There we follow the Whitshanks across three generations and eight decades. Tyler is a master of family scenes in all their complicated glory. One to read on a family holiday.
Early Warning by Jane Smiley
Macmillan, 476pp, £18.99
Jane Smiley is best known for her Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres (1991), a recasting of King Lear on a 1980s Iowa farm. Her “Last Hundred