French Braid
Ratings12
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings12
Average rating3.7
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author—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 in our pandemic present. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation. Full 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.
Reviews with the most likes.
so many characters we follow over decades - the characters kids kids kids kid and so on. Interesting but boring... it's just a family doing family stuff
I really enjoyed this book. Based on the blurb, I was a little worried that the scope meant we wouldn't get an individual sense of the many characters, but that wasn't the case. The snapshots for each character, though brief moments in time, were so vivid and core to their identities - not to mention beautifully written - that I felt not only as though I knew them, but as though I knew them well enough to understand why other characters' perceptions of them were so different from their own. The contrast between how each character saw him or herself and how the other family members thought of them was a fascinating theme, and felt very true to life. What also resonated was how their needs and hopes sometimes overlapped, sometimes clashed with one another - also true. The title - and the explanation for it - was perfect for the story.
For readers seeking plot-driven stories, this isn't it - but for those like me who love a good character-driven novel, I strongly recommend. (I don't often cry while reading books, but the scene where Robin recalls the first dinner Mercy made him brought me to tears.)
Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
My second Anne Tyler, a joy to read, the simple lives of simple people, a family story from the 1940s through to the pandemic. Relationships and marriages, love and family, nothing unique, just ordinary family life.
Oh, Anne Tyler, you get people like no other writer. You see their vulnerabilities. You see their (sometimes hidden) strengths despite their (blatant) weaknesses. And you share these with us, tenderly.
The Garrett family is the central cast in this book. Mom and dad and their kids and their kids. A story that goes through several generations. It starts with a scene between one of the grandkids of the story with her boyfriend. She sees a man she thinks might be her cousin, and her boyfriend is struck by this, finding it odd that she doesn't even recognize her own cousin. And the story draws on this, the connections between family members, their disconnections, their own varying perceptions of their relationships. It's completely fascinating.
Oh, and what does the title have to do with the plot? It was almost at the end before David was having a conversation with his wife about French braids, how his daughter wore them and when she undid the braids, her hair would still be in ripples for hours and hours afterward. “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.” Lovely.
