If it weren’t for Tyler’s eloquent writing, I don’t think this would have been a book I would have finished. When this never came and the story never really went anywhere, it felt very mundane. Each chapter is written in the same way, and as I was reading, I was hoping that there would be a pay-off at some point. Rather than excitement, however, I found that the narrative becomes a bit tedious. When the story begins, the Garrett family is on a rare holiday–an event that seems to hint at some exciting moments in the plot. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. ❃ I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 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 understands. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common.

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 venture beyond Baltimore, 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 major new novel from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author-a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family’s foibles, from the 1950s up to our pandemic present.

French braid book review