Craig Brownis baffled by genius of novelist Anne Tyler

Her prose? Almost without style. Her characters? Quite ordinary. Yet Anne Tyler leaves Craig Brown as thrilled by her intricate tapestry of family life as he is baffled by her genius

“My colleagues ask, ‘How are you, Atta?’ They say, ‘Good to see you, Atta.’ But do they invite me home with them? No... They are, how do you say, two-faced.” ’ But, unlike Amis, Tyler then uses the irritation to reveal further elements in the characters of the irritated. The misfit son Denny suddenly chips in, putting Atta right: ‘In this situation, “Polite” would be more accurate.

‘They’re trying to be polite. They don’t much like you, so they don’t invite you to their homes, but they’re doing their best to be nice to you, and so that’s why they ask how you are and tell you it’s good to see you.’ And thus we glimpse another side to Denny, a side that is eager to convey truth, however uncomfortable.

Tyler has said in the past that her interest is in character, and that she would be happy to dispense with plot if she could. Perhaps this is what makes her plots feel so organic, so unforced. They tend to revolve around the secrets that lurk at the heart of families, and the way that these secrets shape the characters both of those who are aware of them, and those who are not.

But she has a much more optimistic view of human nature than others for whom family secrets have been a guiding force – Ibsen, say, or Tennessee Williams – and her novels often testify to the fortitude with which people keep going once secrets are out.

There are many other themes in this novel – themes of old age and decrepitude, sibling rivalry, the consequences of a sudden death, the tales that define families and echo down generations, the basic human tension between security and anxiety, moving on and staying put. Yet these themes are never underlined, emerging naturally from the interaction of the characters.

And Tyler is the most natural of novelists. Gore Vidal once claimed that he could read any modern novel and tell you which films the novelist had watched in his youth. But I’m quite sure he would have drawn a blank with Tyler. I know of no other novelist who draws so directly from real life, and whose work remains so uncontaminated by the shortcuts and clichés of television and Hollywood.

A Spool Of Blue Thread may be her best yet, though, to be honest, this is what I always tend to say after reading the latest Anne Tyler. I’ve now read it twice, and I may well read it again. But still the question remains: how does she do it?