"From the beloved best-selling, 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."

I always forget what a wonderful writer Anne Tyler is until I read one of her books. The way she manages to weave together multigenerational stories that feel real and true is nothing short of remarkable. Each chapter of French Braid felt like it was rich enough to be its own short story, yet still integral to the novel.

The book makes you think deeply about the people in your family and their younger selves, with all of the stories you know and those you don't. The people in this story are ordinary, yet their stories are told in an extraordinary way.

I find it really interesting that many reviewers are claiming this story felt long to them, as my only complaint with the whole book was that it felt a little short and ended slightly abruptly. (Side note, this was the first book I've read that had part of it take place during the pandemic, which felt sort of surreal).

I say this was a solid 4 stars as it wasn't the most "fun" book or one that I would ever re-read, but I would definitely recommend it to others!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing Group for sharing a digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

An in depth look into the lives of a multi-generational family as they love, fight, and grow over the years. Extremely detailed characterization and vivid storytelling.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58065401

Thank you to #NetGalley and Knopf publishers.

I finished this book in 2 days. I couldn't stop reading it.

I'm biased since I've loved all of Anne Tyler's books. This is no exception. Her characters are well-thought out and they have their own personalities of course.

It starts in 2010 sort of the present. It then goes back to the 1959 when Robin, Mercy and their 3 kids, Alice, Lily, and David are young and go on their first vacation ever.

Then come the husbands, kids, etc. and their lives growing up. Alice and Lily were always rivalries and I felt that they couldn't stand each other. David was the only boy and I felt like he was always left out and different.

It ends during the pandemic when even the kids are "elderly" (in their 70's I'm guessing for Alice and Lily) since they were 2 years apart and David was 68. Mercy and Robin were long gone but when they were alive years before the book ended but it seems that they were only in their 70s but seemed much older even when they were younger.

"French Braid" by Anne Tyler reminded me, again, why I thoroughly enjoy reading her stories. She is an expert story teller, with well developed and very relatable characters. They pop off the page as totally real people you could actually meet in your daily life.. They are flawed, just like the rest of us, but Tyler uses those flaws to bring home her message.

If you have never read an Anne Tyler book, this is a great one to start with and if you are an Anne Tyler fan, I know you will not want to miss this or any of her other works.

Anne Tyler’s latest novel French Braid opens with a young woman, Serena, returning from a visit to her boyfriend’s parents’ house when she spots a man who she thinks is her cousin, but she’s uncertain. Her boyfriend doesn’t understand how that’s possible. How can she not know if that guy is her cousin? In the subsequent pages and chapters, Tyler shows us the workings of a family who really are separate individuals who frequently don’t understand each other and often don’t even try. The novel spans 70 years showing thoughtfulness and love, acceptance and tolerance, dislike and judgement as well as peculiar eccentricities that make up human beings.

I loved reading about the Garrett family and could have happily read about them for a few hundred more pages. Anne Tyler has this gift of writing characters that you could imagine floating through your own life. Even characters that left me a bit unhinged, Mercy Garrett, wife, mother, artist comes to mind because I both loved and disliked her. Actually I felt that love and dislike for many of the characters because they were written with such believable depth. Mercy Garrett leaves her husband bit-by-bit as she removes items from their shared home to her artist’s studio where she’s decided she’s going to live. Critics have expressed that this is a hilarious situation when I found it to be terribly sad.

The narration bounces between characters, allowing the reader to see how scenes were viewed from different perspectives. “Just one side of the story” has never been truer than when you read how these characters view events. And what eventually evolves is how individuals view scenes differently. Also, for characters like father Robin, you see his insecurities, his love, and his desires. He becomes something more than what previous scenes might have shown him to be.

Sometimes I felt a bit torn. For instance, on the one family vacation the Garretts take to Deep Creek Lake, we see how caring and unselfish Alice is but in subsequent scenes she’s depicted as controlling and bossy. I recognize that she can be all of these things because people change as they grow. Likewise, Lily is boy crazy and dramatic, given to flings and tumult, but she’s also open-minded and kind. And, unfortunately, I never completely understood their brother David’s seeming estrangement. I expected some huge reveal, which didn’t happen, that would explain him to me. That would explain how he would even cut Alice, who was always the one to understand him and the one who pretty much raised him, from his life. There was a smaller reveal but it didn’t satisfy me. (Or maybe I just need to be hit over the head.)

French Braid is a quilt of narration, ideas, and realizations. What does it mean to be a parent, a wife, a father, daughter, sibling? Individuals in a family can love each other but that doesn’t mean they have to like each other. While it never answers why one family is close and another isn’t, it certainly does show how a family becomes separate.

Perhaps the most bittersweet scenes are the ones in which Tyler tackles the pandemic world. How a child navigates meeting other children, living with his grandparents while his mother works as an ER doctor, how he makes face masks on a sewing machine, sometime badly, and how when its time to leave, his grandparents feel the absence so strongly.

And, for this reader, having lived 70 years with this family in just a few days, I felt sadness in seeing the period ending the last sentence.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another amazingly insightful book by Anne Tyler. We follow the various members of the Garrett family over the course of about 80 years. I identified so much with the way this polite, disconnected family operated! Sometimes I saw glimpses of myself and cringed. Other times I felt a bit smug. I devoured this book in three sittings, laughed out loud (make a note to share that bit) and cried twice.
I rarely read books more than once, but I want to share this with my book club and others.
I was given advance access to the book through #NetGalley for my review. #FrenchBraid

Like an artist painting a portrait, Anne Tyler uses words to fully capture the essence of her characters. In French Braid, we are introduced to the Garrett Family in a series of vignettes that span from the summer of 1959 to the Covid lockdown of 2020. These short, yet poignant insights into various family members give us a glimpse of both their personalities and the inner workings of their familial relationships. A heartwarming read that reminds us that no family is perfect, but that we are intertwined with our relatives through the good and the bad and that the choices we make have an effect on subsequent generations.

A must read for fans of This is Us and of course, all of Anne Tyler’s previous works.

Thank you to NetGalley, Knopf, and Anne Tyler for this digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I devoured this book. Sad to say this is the first book I have read by this amazing author, who is a master at storytelling. I have a lot of catching up to do !

Anne Tyler is a national treasure and FRENCH BRAID is one of her finest novels. Once again, she crafts a rich and complex tale of family ties, lies, and transgressions--and along the way gives her reader the wondrous opportunity to laugh a little...and treasure one's own family a little more. Highly recommended!

Many thanks to Knopf Doubleday and to Netgalley for the opportunity and the pleasure of the read.

French Braid is a slow-burn, character driven novel surrounding the Garret family, which spans over many decades. I found this book to be slow in parts and I did not necessarily relate to any of the characters, which is driving my middle-of-the-road rating. While there was great character development and the writing was beautiful, it was difficult to feel invested in the lives of these characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A family story that takes us through the ages. Ups and downs in this one particular family and all their quirks.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

This is the story of a family with issues and how they dealt with each other. The mother wants to paint and virtually lives in her studio. The father doesn't know what to do about that.

French Braid written by Pulitzer prize winning author, Anne Tyler is a a multi-generational family drama. The novel begins in the 1950's when the The Garretts take a long overdue family vacation with their three children, Alice, Lily and David. Each chapter deals with another decade through the recent pandemic. The reader sees how the family deals with each other's flaws and how the various family relationships grow and change through time. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the novel and viewing the changing family dynamics through time and generations. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have always enjoyed Anne Tyler's stories and this was no exception. This book is exactly what you expect from the writer, a wonderful family drama. I always say I need to read more of her backlist and this one reminds me that I actually need to read her backlist books I've not yet read. She has a wonderful way of allowing the reader into the everyday lives of her characters. And the writing is always perfectly engaging.

I enjoyed immersing myself in this family study that Tyler tells with such dexterity and humanity. The first chapter is such an intriguing way to start; in almost present day, grandchild Serena accompanied her college boyfriend to his house, and on the way home she runs into her cousin that she didn't really recognize.

This is the point that I admit that I have ONE cousin, and I must admit that I might not recognize him if I ran into him, and he without a doubt wouldn't recognize me. So perhaps this book touches me more than I can convey in a review.

After the first chapter that intrigues you because you're introduced to Serena's closed-off family, you go back to the beginning with Robin and Mercy as a young couple with their children Alice, Lily, and David. In this family that is not known for sharing, so much goes unsaid from generation to generation.

There is a heaviness, despite its slim size, to this book. It can be uncomfortable with the disconnectedness of this family. Many might say it's slow with little plot and focused on the characters. True and true. If you're okay with very little plot, then I think there's a good chance you'll really like this. If you need a propulsive plot, you might want to skip.

Excellent book!

I received a free electronic ARC of this novel from Netgalley, Anne Tyler, and Knopf, publishers. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read French Braid of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Anne Tyler is one of those authors I know I must have as soon as the book comes out. From The Clock Winder to this latest release, French Braid, I know it's gonna be a book to read fast, then slowly, savoring the familial similarities and differences, and the intricate dance steps of these lives.

French Braid takes place in Baltimore and the family Garrett is a mixed bunch - about the only thing they all have in common is their love for one another. Their ONLY family vacation took place in 1959, and their current lives are varied. Mother Mercy now that the kids are gone, aspires to be an artist, she even rents a garage apartment down the street to work on her art away from home. She is thinking of making a business painting house portraits on commission. Father Robin carries on with Mercy's inherited second-generation family business, a plumbing supply house. In his footsteps is their daughter Alice, assistant manager, and Robin is taking more time off, taking work more casually as Alice learns the ropes and assumes some of the pressures at the store. Their daughter Lily is married, pregnant with another (also married) man's baby, back home and trying to make sense of her world and get her life straightened out before the baby comes. And youngest child, son David, a freshman away at Islington College, is mute when his mother and sisters expect updates on his life, and when he brings home a girl - a woman 11 years his senior with a pre-teen daughter - for Sunday dinner, they are speechless.

What has happened to their staid, oh-so-normal life? How adaptable as they going to have to be? Where did all this strife and conflict come from? Where did they go so wrong? How are they going to handle all this? Wait! Do they have to handle all this?

French Braid is classic Anne Tyler in the best way. A beautifully crafted, carefully observed story of a family in all of its intricacies and complications. While this book is short, it is rich and deep and full of detail. It’s broad in scope but also holds so many small moments. Fans of Tyler will be thrilled with this book and folks who are reading her for the first time will be thrilled to discover her earlier works afterward.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday for an advance reader’s copy.

I've never read an Anne Tyler book before, and unfortunately this story just wasn't for me. From the way FRENCH BRAID was described as a multigenerational family saga, I expected the writing to feel much more literary than it did. That may not necessarily be a bad thing, as the writing was simple and and fairly quick-paced. I normally enjoy quiet, slice-of-life stories where an author can describe something simple and leave you with more complex thoughts, but I didn't feel like I got much of anything from this story. The family was so ordinary that it was hard for me to have any feelings about them one way or the other (except the mother, who I pretty strongly disliked). The opening chapter makes it sound like there's going to be some big secret revealed to explain why the Garrett family doesn't talk to each other very much, but there's never anything like that. The family just isn't close to one another. The part of the book I enjoyed the most was the earliest scenes when the family took a vacation together when the children were young. This drew me in to the characters, but then as the story kept jumping forward, I cared about them less and less, until I found myself skimming through the last third of the book. As my review seems to be in the minority here, maybe my disappointment with this book came from expecting it to be something it wasn't.

(I received an ARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

The publisher describes “French Braid” as “classic Anne Tyler” and indeed it is! Which means this book is a witty, perceptive and thoroughly entertaining delight about three generations of a family. The story spans about 60 years, and each chapter presents a story of a specific family unit. We start in the late 1950’s with the ups and downs of a family vacation, and continue In approximately ten year increments until the pandemic.

A young bride becomes a mother, and then a grandmother. This woman is a painter and she paints the essence or spirit of houses for their owners. Her paintings are rather unfocused, except there is always one small part of the painting that is done in incredible detail. And this is exactly how the story goes. We get an overview of the brothers and sisters, the cousins and grandchildren, as each chapter focuses intensely on one time in their lives.

Some of the events are happy; some are sad or troubling. There are deaths, divorces, misunderstandings hurt feelings. a wild child, a child who is too careful, a son who isn’t mechanically-minded like his dad. As the story zooms in on the particulars, you might be worried about this family. But as the years go by, and you see the the course of their lives displayed on a broad canvas, you realize- it’s just a regular family, with regular joys and jolts.

At the end, we realize that life is like “the song that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends.” This is a brilliant book. Read it- you’ll love it. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf’s Doubleday Publishing Group for an advance review copy. This is my honest review.

The main character in French Braid is the family as a whole. Each person and personality become a working part in the lives of each of the other family members. Robin and Mercy wed and remained together in spirit their entire lives. Their children are vastly different and don’t always get along with their parents, but do respect and love them. While their interactions are few once they grow up, they do communicate and get together for important events.

Robin and Mercy’s three children, two girls and a boy, grew up and out of the house, having problems and families of their own. Their grandchildren are closer to Robin and Mercy than their children have been. Perhaps the grandparents are seeking the joy they missed while parenting them, not noticing how far apart the family has become until the reality of grandchildren jars them into the present. The author appropriately writes: “Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be”. Who really knows what goes on behind closed doors?

I loved this novel. It quietly moved on over the lifespan of the characters, just like real life. One day we are young and all too soon we grow old – it is what happens in between that the author writes of. As in all families, there are joys and sorrows. There are choices made that ended badly, but some of them worked out just fine. But no matter what happens, the characters, like most people, are lucky enough to be able to love, share and help their families.

Anne Tyler is the acclaimed author of many works of fiction. I have read some, but not all of her books. All that I have read, I have enjoyed, especially French Braid. I highly recommend reading this magnificent work of fiction. Her style of writing is like talking to a dear friend. Not to mention gems throughout the story such as, “…Greta slept peacefully, her breathing as soft as flour sifting…”.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: I have a material connection because I received a review copy for free from the Author and Netgalley and the author in exchange for a fair and honest review. Copyright © 2022 Laura Hartman

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