Still set in the same small town Baltimore, another family, this time we are inside the mind of Delia Grinstead, the youngest of three adult sisters, daughters of a local GP who has recently passed away. I wanted to try another Anne Tyler novel to have a better sense of her work and so I asked around for recommendations and eventually decided on Ladder of Years. This is how it ends, three generations upended, we found out how they came to be and what their origins were at the end. Her husband died in 1997, and their two daughters have gone on to careers in the arts.Reading Anne Tyler’s 20th novel A Spool of Blue Thread, reviewed here, first felt a little like turning to the back of the book before reading it through. She remains closely associated with the city of Baltimore, Maryland, her home since 1967, and is the location used in many of her books. Tyler has won many literary awards including a Pulitzer.

Seven years after high school, Tyler dedicated her first published novel to 'Mrs. Her other credit is given to a former high school English teacher, Phillis Peacock. Tyler considered herself to be an outsider in public schools, but also attributed that same feeling as having been a valuable asset in her writing success. Her early perception of changes over time appear and reappear in Tyler's novels, just as her favorite book, The Little House, appears in her first novel. Her favorite book was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton, and had a profound influence on her ability to show 'how the years flowed by, people altered, and nothing could ever stay the same'. Her first short stories, she told to herself under the covers at 3 years of age, to try to get sleepy. Her practical, hands on education was supplemented by correspondence school. They were Quakers who lived in a series of Quaker communes, one being formed by conscientious objectors, as Anne was age 7 through 11. Tyler was born in Minneapolis Minnesota, as the oldest of four children to a chemist Dad and a social worker Mother. She has been compared to John Updike, Jane Austin, and Eudora Welty.

Some of her more well-known novels are: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, and A Spool of Blue Thread. She has had 22 novels published, being cited in literary publications as creating fully developed characters and commended for her accurate attention to detail.

Anne Tyler, an American novelist, is also an author of short stories and is a literary critic.

Ladder of years author