Writing as Anne Tyler does best, taking the ordinary interactions and relationships within a family and weaving a story. Likening family dynamics to a French braid where each separate strand is twisted and interwoven until one complete braid is visible. Each family, though unique, adds something distinct to the picture of the family as a whole.
Beautifully written and descriptively, Tyler once again tackles the dynamics of relationships.

Our story is about the Garrett family from Baltimore. It takes us from the 1950’s to the current pandemic days. It is basically daily life but somehow feels so much more complex than that. It was relatively short and a quick read, I could have read another hundred pages easily.

If you enjoy character driven, family saga/drama pieces of work you may enjoy this. I for sure did. It’s spans decades and across generations and was a good fit for me. I enjoyed the many layers to the relationships and the characters. I always enjoy books that have multiple siblings, being an only child they fascinate me, fact or fiction. I ended up liking the characters I didn’t expect to, and then not loving some of the ones I did initially. I especially enjoyed how you don’t realize how far down the family tree you are until something is referenced from sometime ago in the book and in the characters past. It was very well written in my opinion. One of our characters paints, having done some painting myself her unique style fascinated me and I couldn’t get enough of those little tidbits. Rounding this up to a 5.

Many thanks to our author and Knopf Doubleday Publishing for providing me with an eARC on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This was published on March 22nd, 2022. I hope if you choose to read it you like it as much as I did.

It took me awhile to get into this book. The writing style was definitely different than most of what I read - it felt a bit stiff at first. But the family drama and dynamics ended up drawing me in. She's a very talented writer, for sure. But a little higher-brow than what I usually read (YA).

This author has the gift of creating great characters, in an ordinary setting, who keep us engaged.
Her characters, in this story are an extended family, and what goes on in their lives as they grow older. From generation to generation, we see how each one reacts to what life has thrown them, and how it impacts the other people in the story.
The author makes you feel you are right there, invested in the characters as we see the changes developing.
I think maybe there is something in her stories that make us think about our own lives, or remember something we may have experienced, which for me makes it a good read.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for a copy of this book.

Gave this a four star rating, but to be honest, I could have given it 3 or 3.5. Out of fairness to this author's long legacy of lovable books, I gave it four. The book was okay, but not one of her best. I love multi-generational family stories, but his book was not at the top of my favorites. Tyler does offer great insight into human behavior, but I just felt that the story didn’t go anywhere, except down through several generations of a very ordinary, middle -of-the-road family. I had read so many good things about this book, so I expected a bit more. Still many may find this a worthwhile read.

This is one messed up family. I had to finish the book just to see if it got any better. All the men were "jerks" and the women selfish. The jumping back and forth concused me and I did not care enough to go back and see what was going on. I gave it 2 stars since I did finish the book.

Wasn't sure I would like this book. But I'm glad I stuck with it.
Nice family drama book.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.
While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

A glimpse into 3 generations of the Garrett family, from the 1950s to present, and all the small things and events that bind and separate. I didn't initially like this book, but once I realized that it was character-driven rather than plot-driven, I was able to let go of my expectations and just follow along with the characters as they lived their own (sometimes messy) lives.

Interwoven family drama saga. I love Anne Tyler's writing, how it's soft and sad and melancholy and sharp all at once. Definitely worth a read, it skips right along.

This book follows a dysfunctional family through several decades. The premise is good but the resulting book just made me sad. I wanted to like this book; I really did. But I found the characters to be one dimensional and boring. They were unkind to each other. I can usually find something good in every book I read. Sadly, not in this book.

I'm turning this book over and over in my mind. I will for awhile because it's such an insightful study of a family's humanity. It's no surprise that French Braid is beautifully written. It's by Anne Tyler, who I really should have returned to sooner. Years ago, I read The Accidental Tourist and I never forgot how lovely her writing is. French Braid does not disappoint. Tyler reminds us that we are forever entwined with family even if we are not that close to them or are all but estranged. And there need not be an "aha" moment or a terrible secret that led to this distance. We are complicated. We are oblivious. We assume a lot about the people we spend our earliest years with and the people we marry or partner with and these assumptions spiral us into fixed opinions and patterns.

This is a story of the Garretts -- Dad Robin, the insecure plumber who isn't quite sure why Mercy, daughter of the owner of a successful plumbing supply store picked him. Mercy, who remains something of a cypher but we know that she is so absorbed in creating her (possibly mediocre) art that Alice, her eldest daughter had to make sure the family had food on the table from a young age. Lily, the "problem" child who we first meet as a boy crazy teenager with little to no oversight. David, the later in the marriage son, with a terrific imagination, whose hands on concrete things father is forever disappointed in him, or is he?

This portrait of a family is brilliantly set up for us in the very beginning when Serena, Lily's college age daughter, has just traveled to Philadelphia with her boyfriend to meet his parents. As they leave the station, she mentions that she thinks a young man on the platform is her cousin, but she isn't sure and she doesn't approach him. This sets up the, "we know each other, but we don't know each other" truth of the Garrett family. They don't talk openly with one another, so they spend a lot of time protecting the family from learning about things everyone in fact knows. It is so clever, this insight into some very odd human behavior that keeps people apart emotionally as they misguidedly protect secrets for others. The reader will generally recognize these folks, although Mercy is a definite outlier in her choices. Since Robin was a workaholic, it would be fair to say their three children were not actively parented. Alice, Lily and David then find partners and have children who have children. New relationships. New stories. Old stories. All the way up to the COVID-19 lockdown period.

Take any family. Take any individual. Ann Tyler can make their complicated internal selves real to us, make us see their impact on others and put it all together in a remarkable, sticks with us story. At a family vacation home, my mother left a number of Tyler novels on the shelves. I'll be reading them this summer.

I loved this book. Tyler has gone from odd families to real families that the reader can relate to. I didn’t want this book to end because I enjoyed the characters so much. The subtle humor was wonderful and who can’t relate to Alice or Mercy or Robin or David or any of the other wonderful characters. More like this please Anne !!! Thank you #NetGalley for #FrenchBraid.

What a beautifully written novel about those family ties, whether they bind us or divide us. I will admit, that I was initially lost with the multiple story lines. However, after getting to know the characters of this novel, I was committed. The characters felt realistic, meaning that I didn't necessarily love one completely, but pieces of each. This is only the second book that I have read by Anne Tyler and I cannot wait to dig into more of them now.
Thank you Net Galley and Knopf Publishing Group for the copy of this novel.

The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. In French Braid, Tyler weaves a family saga with indifference being the common thread. In a quiet, steady, immensely detailed manner, readers watch the Garrett family go about their ordinary lives without really developing meaningful connections. I use the term “watch” because as the reader, I really felt like an outsider. After all, why would I be invited in when they don’t even invite their own sister, daughter, brother, etc. in? The characters aren’t vicious or evil and no one truly wrongs anyone else; they are just quietly selfish and relatively uncaring toward their family in a completely human way. The normalcy of it is both obnoxious and disheartening. There are nuggets of wisdom in the pages - melancholy observations that are undoubtedly true but frankly quite depressing. This took me quite a while to read because I simply felt sad most of the time and not in a cathartic tears way, but in the way you feel when you pass a graveyard and realize you’ll be in one someday. Tyler is prolific at what she does and I have no doubt this novel succeeds at what she intended, but for me it was rather depressing.

I just finished this book and I’m not sure how I really feel about. Frankly, most of the book was fairly boring. I had no interest in this family that didn’t seem to like each other. The book did get a little better when we saw more of David’s life as a father and grandfather. But it was enough to salvage this book for me. Not Anne Tyler at her best

Ann Tyler can do no wrong in my book. This is a beautiful, quiet story about family, expectations, and belonging. As a mom with kids reaching the age of launching out into the world, I especially appreciated the parent/child relationships depicted throughout the book. I love how Tyler can take the absolute ordinary and turn it into beauty. I loved how the book floated in time and space, picking up with characters you might have missed in a previous chapters. I really enjoyed discovering the interconnectedness of the characters. A beautiful book full of love, heartbreak, sadness, and joy.

t’s been a while since I read an Anne Tyler, and I’ve forgotten how sweet and melancholy a meander in her worlds can be. Everyone gets to be human, flaws patted in gently beside strengths.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

The Anne Tyler books I have read all have shown me that she has a unique strength of understanding families and different dynamics within families. In French Braid, the story of the Garrett family is told, starting in 1959 and continuing to present day. The Garett’s are a middle class family of 5 from Baltimore and there are struggles, heartbreak, and laugh out loud funny moments. At the end of the book I was hoping for a big tie back to the beginning but it wasn’t there. I enjoyed the story, just wished it looped back around at the end. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an advanced readers copy of this book!

Reading French Braid was like hearing my friend tell me about all the petty drama of her family. Being that I would already be very familiar with the family nothing seemed out of ordinary or too exciting and that goes for the book. That said, reading the book is like a steady drip, you continue through it and maybe even consider not going on, but you continue through the saga. I didn't love the book but I was vested. I did like the reference to Covid which in the future will really define a time period.

I've always admired Anne Tyler's gift as an author. She dissects the ordinary and mundane acts of everyday living and the dynamics of families better than anyone. While she appears to write about dysfunctional families, in truth what families are not dysfunctional at some level. She drills down into the seemingly normal appearances most families display to the outside world to reveal the true characteristics and flaws. How often have we admired other people's marriage and families and thought they seemed perfect and wished our relationships could be as good. It's why you always hear "you never really know what's going on in someone else's life." I enjoyed the exploration into the family in French Braid and the great character development of the family members, as well as the timeline over the many generations.