Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.įull of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close-yet how unknowable-every family is to itself.

Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. It is my fourth Anne Tyler novel, and I return to her work because I find her non-judgemental humanism and compassionate portrayal of ordinary people. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Anne Tyler's 24th novel, 'French Braid,' is a multigenerational family saga that explores the interactions of the Garret family, an ordinary middle-class Baltimore family, over six decades. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart.

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. “A quietly subversive novel, tackling fundamental assumptions about womanhood, motherhood and female aging.” - The New York Times Book Review From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread-a funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles, from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild.

French Braid by Anne Tyler