Episode: Ep280: Anne Tyler on her new novel A Spool of Blue Thread

Anne Tyler's writing career spans fifty years and twenty novels, including Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist and A Patchwork Planet. She's a bestselling author who has won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critic Circle Award. In a rare interview she talks to Mariella Frostrup about her new novel, her twentieth, A Spool of Blue Thread. The Australian novelist Elizabeth Harrower reveals why she gave up a passionate relationship with her writing, while literary admirer Eimear McBride describes why she finds Harrowers' novels an acutely observed portrait of our most intimate relationships. And Dr Sarah Dillon is back with another undercover investigation into the workings of our classic prose, this time with Dame Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.