Anne Tyler's latest novel continues the themes she explores in many novels: family dynamics a d how small actions can ripple down the generations.
The Garret family live in Tyler's beloved Baltimore. The story follows them from the 1940s to the present say and the impact of lockdown.
Mercy Garrett the matriarch raises 3 children and when they leave home, she quietly moves out of the family home to her own art studio a d no-one comments.
There one and only family holday holiday in 1959 is the starting point for the myths and patterns of behaviour that permeates down the years.

French Braid by Anne Tyler

This is the 24th novel from Anne Tyler and it is a classic Tyler novel spanning 60 years and four generations of a standard middle class white family from Baltimore. But this is not to disparage because Anne Tyler has perfected the American family novel. Not many writers get to the heart and truth of being in a family as she does.

The family consists of Robin and Mercy, the parents and owners of a hardware store, their three children Alice, the sensible one, Lucy, the unruly teenager, and David, the quiet sensitive youngest child. As the time progresses the family is extended with spouses, grandchildren and great grandchildren The novel spans the 1950s to the present day with David’s son and grandson temporarily moving back home to take refuge from the covid epidemic. What Tyler does so well is that there are no grand explosive moments that cause damage to family relationships but rather small incidents that through lack of communication fester into something larger. Such as Mercy who stealthily leaves her husband after David goes to college. No one in the family acknowledges this including the couple. Similarly when Lucy introduces her fiance no one is to mention that she already has a husband. The most damaging unsaid family truth is the relationship between Robin and David. There is often speculation between Alice and Lucy about David’s distance towards them and their parents but no one actually knows because Robin's dislike of David is never really discussed.

Yet the three sibling children of Robin and Mercy continue to function as a family at a respectful and sometimes very wide distance, three strands of a french braid being pulled apart but then brought together again.

Anne Tyler has become an auto-buy author for me with her unique ability to tell stories about extended family life, their unique dynamics and the ripples that can cause change much like a French braid when you unravel it.

The book starts with a young couple Serena and Jeff going to meet his family for the first time, on their return leg to Baltimore she spots someone who she thinks is her cousin in the train station. Jeff, her partner, is bemused that she doesn't know her family well coming from a much more tight-knit circle.

We then skip back in time to 1959 and learn more about the Garrett family. We meet Robin and Mercy and their three children Alice, Lily and David on their first family holiday. Alice and Lily are teenagers at this point and David an astute seven year old is happier playing with his toys than learning to swim. An incident then occurs which causes ripples that remain for the rest of their lives primarily because it largely goes unnoticed.

As the children grow, they each have their own lives and families and we learn more about them through the perspectives of different family members or when they reunite at their increasingly infrequent family get togethers. Alice and Lily continue to maintain family ties but David drifts away and no one quite knows why. Incidents such as Mercy moving into her art studio in a bid for independence and to pursue her passion for painting, occur throughout their family history and remain unsaid either to keep the peace, compassion or just simply lack of awareness.

Tyler once again nails it in her ability to drew you into the story of a mundane American family and their emotional ties and family dynamics. You are drawn to them all in their individual ways, she just has a unique way to turn ordinary characters into something magical and special.

Another great book from Tyler and definitely one to add to your reading list if you enjoy her writing style.

This is the second book I have read by Anne Tyler and I still can't really see what al the fuss and acclamation is about. "French Braid" runs right up to the present day, with the final section being set during the Covid-19 pandemic. It is a family history following 4 generations of the Garrett family who are mainly based in the Eastern USA. Nothing much happens and the pace at times is glacial. One for those interested in family dynamics.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

An elegant and understated tour de force, French Braid takes disparate strands of family history and weaves them into a masterpiece. Anne Tyler never fails to impress and this is the best of her novels I have read to date.

This has a familiar Anne Tyler opening with one generation and steps back to the previous ones and then proceeds chronologically. It is a family saga set in Baltimore that fills me simultaneously with melancholy and nostalgia. I was struck by the isolation and loneliness of the characters - this seems to be a side effect of the American Lifestyle - it's almost a surprise when characters outside the family appear. I read it at a sitting which is a tribute to her marvellous writing.

Patterns of restriction and separation rippling down the generations

Anne Tyler examines superbly, deeply, with such a subtle and fine brush stroke, the dysfunctions and adaptations of ordinary lives. She is a writer who takes the extraordinary individual nuances of ‘undramatic’ lives, and teases out both their uniqueness, and their universality. Trauma runs through us all. So (if we are reasonably lucky) does resilience.
We are shaped (like braided hair) by what is confined and inhibited in us, and even when restrictions are removed – for example, when a child becomes an adult and leaves home to make their own way (and impose their own shape upon new relationships) the imprint of original shaping may visibly ripple.

Here, Tyler journeys with the Garretts, a Baltimore family, through 3 generations – and the shadows of a prior fourth generation still visible.

What intrigues me, in her writing, is how subtly, lightly, but also penetratingly, she alerts the reader to what is going on, what may be going on.

The book opens with a young dating couple, in 2010, Serena Drew, and her boyfriend,on their way back from a Sunday lunch in Philadephia, back to Baltimore, where they are students. Serena has just been introduced to James’ parents for the first time. Waiting for their train, there appears to be a chance sighting of someone who may, or may not be, Serena’s cousin Nicholas. And a conversation which begins to reveal that Serena’s family (her mother is one of the Garrett clan) are a little odd in their distance and detachment, their strange, undramatic drifts away from each other.

I found myself reading this opening section, which was deftly amusing, in a state of some tension – Tyler subtly suggesting the chasms already in place between the couple. Family patterns seem to suggest this particular young love was unlikely to yield anything much.

With that 2010 opening set out, with characters (well one character) that we are not going to meet again for quite some time, Tyler takes us back through time, and starts an examination of earlier Garretts, Mercy and Robin, with their 3 children, Alice, 17, Lily, 15 and David, 7, on their first family holiday ever. It is 1959. And we begin to see small events, and how these open out and reveal all the patterns which have rippled before, and will ripple afterwards, down the generations

I loved this, unreservedly. Tyler absolutely trusts her readers, we can be shown all sorts of things, she doesn’t need to shout at us, or beat us round the head with operatic traumatic events of family dysfunctions. Her writing is the extraordinary of ‘normal’

Thank you for allowing me to read this new book by Anne Tyler. I always enjoy her . This is a lovely story about the Garratt family through the generations. It begins with the first holiday the family took, whilst David was very young and his two sisters teenagers. They are all very different in personality and character. The story then takes us back to how the pareMercy and Robin met and married. We very quickly pick up on who inherited what traits, the grandchildren come along and we see why the title is French Braid. The interlacing of these personalities is just like hair braiding.
A good read that kept my interest throughout.

This is my first Anne Tyler novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very refreshing to read about family life that isn’t all roses around the door and that family life is all about getting on.

The book starts in 1959 and goes through to the present day, encompassing COVID. The Garrett family have never been on a family holiday before and will not go on another one. Although Mercy Garrett, her husband and three children David, Lily and Alice have all gone together they don’t share many moments as a family. This holiday does however have lasting memories and consequences.

As we watch Mercy’s children grow into adulthood Anne Tyler has given us a lot of humour surrounding family dynamics. Family meals and surprise parties, that are not all harmonious. To me their lives seem extremely haphazard. The characterisation is brilliant. I adore Mercy. Definitely a free spirit waiting to flower as her children leave home. Her husband seems a little too meek and doesn’t exert his authority. All of the children are totally different. David is quite introverted and is aloof from his sister’s. Lily is far more of an extrovert than Alice.

This is a wonderful look at family life through the decades and just how as a family we are all different. We go our separate ways however we are there for one another if the need arises.

Not once did I want to put this down, it was absorbing, interesting with a cast full of quirky characters, But more than once I couldn't figure out where the meandering was taking me and why. It follows the development and relationships of an arguably dysfunctional family, starting with their holiday set in the 1950's. The kids are in their teens, a period where identities are forming, and the family appear close and loving and relatively normal. And yet their paths twist in strange ways, and they become more eccentric as they age, which brings us to the present where the matriarch is trying to dissociate from the family, and the kids have grown up and scattered. I guess its a unfortunate reflection of real life, and how close bonds can be lost as we strive for individuality and follow our own paths. Its well written and the characters are clear and defined, but the story itself left me feeling a bit sad, and perhaps confused with the message the author was trying to share.

I loved this book. We meet the Garrett family and in true Ann Tyler fashion, they are a range of quirky characters. We start off in the present day but quickly go back to 1959 when Robin and Mercy take their 3 children on holiday for the first time. Ann Tyler has a way of drawing her readers in to her fictional world and I was well and truly drawn in. I could not wait to find out what happened to each character and the family as a whole. If you are an Ann Tyler fan, you will not be disappointed.

Familiar Anne Tyler territory. Dysfunctional family and the relationships between the generations. Some very interesting characters and back stories. Everyone seems to blame their parents although they were odd parents! There are three children on which we focus as well as the parents. As young children they are left to their own devices a great deal of the time which they each resent in their own way. I enjoyed reading this but ultimately it was unsatisfactory

What a fascinating story. I read the whole book in two sittings! The author allowed you to dwell inside the Garrett family's everyday life over the course of many years. The characters were complex, like most families, and their relationships were a joy to read about. I loved it and highly recommend it.

Spanning generations, Tyler captures the complexities of relationships between grandparents, parents, siblings, children and lovers. Decades pass and the reader witnesses these simultaneously evolve and endure. This feat of genealogical engineering is accompanied by well rounded characters and evocative time periods, to produce an astonishingly relatable novel.

I actually hadn't read any Anne Tyler before, but I will be sure to now: her writing style is just so readable! Its cyclical structure is just exquisite, and the relevance of the title is poignantly revealed towards the end (just as I was wondering why on earth it was called French Braid!).

Anne Tyler gives us an astutely observed novel, set in Baltimore, of the dynamics of an ordinary American family that begins in 1959 when the Garretts, father Robin, mother Mercy and their three children, the sensible and responsible Alice, the more flighty and rebellious Lily, attractive to and attracted to boys, and the sensitive 7 year old David, take their one and only family holiday at Deep Creek Lake. On holiday they can be seen as people who appear to not even know each other, alone and apart, yet in the relating of small acts that occur then and through time, we see how the effects ripple through the decades. In the title, Tyler gives us the metaphor of a French braid, which on being undone, crinkles are left in the hair for a considerable length of time, informing us "That's how families work too. You think you're free of them but you're never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever."

Through the decades we are given perspectives of different family members and others, their efforts to attain personal agency, their desires, the marriages, divorce, death, having children and grandchildren. When David leaves for college in 1970, Mercy is left with an empty nest and uses the opportunity to move essentials to live at her art studio, intent on putting all her energies into her painting, doing it gradually so that Robin doesn't notice, but, of course, he does eventually, but nothing is said. Whilst Alice and Lily maintain family ties, David's visits home are few and far between, and when he marries Greta, it is not him that lets the family know of the event. Two Robins are born, a girl to Alice and a boy to Lily, it is Candle (Kendall) who forms a close relationship with Mercy through her love of art, whilst the family come together for Robin and Mercy's 50th wedding anniversary. We finally begin to understand David, now a retired teacher, and who he is with his personal family experience of Covid when his young grandson, Benny, comes to stay with his son, Nicolas.

Running through the narrative is humour, compassion and humanity, capturing the resentments, judgements, bickering, love, and the need for independence within families, much of which will resonate for so many readers, along with the knowing and yet not knowing close family members. Tyler nails it when it comes to identifying and painting a picture of the complex and emotional ties that bind and pull apart the modern American family. This is a wonderfully engaging novel that is a delight and joy to read, beautifully written, covering life through the decades, which given its relatively short length, showcases the remarkable talents of the author. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher.

Oh the joy of having a new Anne Tyler novel to read ! Tyler is one of my favourite writers and this is for me one of her best novels. A beautiful, insightful and sparsely written novel full of emotion and observations on family life. This is the story of the Garrett family from the 1950s to the 2020s and Tyler really captures what it is to be part of a family and the ebb and flow of those familial relationships. Tyler brings her characters to life with so few words and I felt that I knew and was invested in the lives of all the Garretts. I found the last part particularly moving and was bereft when I finished this gorgeous novel. Highly recommended.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Classic Anne Tyler - a warm hearted tale of a family, their love for each other alongside the usual misunderstandings and grudges. The 'French Braid' in the title is the way that families are intertwined, and even when you try to disentangle yourself or the hair from the braid, the waves still remain.

As usual with Anne Tyler there is no great climax or moment of peril, simply beautifully written prose, a calm understanding of family dynamics and a host of wonderful characters. So, so good,

How many Anne Tyler novels open in a railway station? Quite a few of them, and stations are featured in more. Here we meet Serena and James, off home after visiting his parents for the first time, with mentions of James' large (well, not by AT standards but substantial) family meeting her next time in her memory as she thinks she sees one of her cousins, but isn't sure. She's from a fractured family - but why?

That was in 2010, and somewhat oddly, we don't meet Serena again apart from off-stage, being discussed by her mother, one of the three siblings this book is actually about. It's quite a common Tyler trope, at least in the later books, to start modern then step back in time to fill in the details, although here we then go past 2010 to come right up to date into pandemic times in the latter part of the book. We follow the family, two sisters and a much younger brother, as they navigate childhood and young adulthood and consider why they make the choices they make. We watch sibling rivalries overtake the two sisters and the nature of the men they marry, all the while as their mother makes her own plans to have a second life after her one as a mother and wife. What will follow into the grandchildren - what tropes and looks, and how will they be woven together - or will they be?

More substantial than Redhead by the Side of the Road and a lovely read, a classic Anne Tyler.

Full review (out Monday 07 March) https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/book-review-anne-tyler-french-braid/

You know what you’re getting with Anne Tyler, a really good writer of stories which are very perceptive portrayals of human connections and disconnections. The family is apparently like French braid, even when uncoiled, still retaining the memory of that shape. This family has its failures, opportunities to connect missed, proper understanding and distance allowed to fester bad feeling. Yet this will resonate with a recognisable pattern for many. The time frame stretches over several generations, and personally I was sorry not to follow through on at least one part of that. But that is quite true to life, in that we never get the whole story. The author has carved out a niche in this genre of the American family, warts and all, and she is very good at it.

I hate to admit it, but I haven't actually read any Anne Tyler before. I've somehow never got round to it. But even if you knew nothing at all about the author before diving into this book, you'd recognise within the first few pages that this is the work of an accomplished novellist.

French Braid is simply an effortless read: a concise family epic following three generations of the Garrett family. There's not all that much plot, but the characters are engaging enough in themselves to keep you turning the pages. Tyler writes with humour and sensitivity, and I found myself utterly absorbed by this understated story of family life.