French Braid: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Redhead by the Side of the Road

For a book lover , it is unacceptable to buy a damaged, second hand book. Poor quality paper and print. Damaged , torn jacket

Too much description-of-family-from-60s-onwards, not enough story.

And this woman does it again! More victoriously so, this time. This is the story of the Garett's. A walk down into their history of coming together, marrying, giving birth, leaving and finally dying. Except the story never ends with the family disappearing because families live, somehow or the other. That's the thing about kinship and bonds we create throughout our lives. They outlive its creators and what survives is the surname and some little habit, here and there, to remind one of whose child, grandchild one was once upon a time. The Garett's have had a very similar history. The story opens with a girl named Serena returning home after meeting her boyfriend's family in 2010. After that, Anne Tyler takes us back to the 1950s, when Serena's mother was a young girl trying to find her way through a family vacation that made the whole family lonesome. And then, we are in the 70s, Serena's mother and her sister have left their parents, and her grandmother, Mercy, is suddenly lonely when her son, too, leaves. But Mercy begins concentrating on her love for painting, as her marriage begins showing some dents. And then we are in the 90s, and then 2014, and finally 2020! Like that, we see a family growing, hurting, loving and departing like a french braid that once tied together falls apart in ripples when it loses it band. I have so much to say on this but I don't think I can say all that and not end up spoiling the book for you. This book has made me cry at several instances. It made me think of my own family and what it would be to get old. I kept thinking how my parents would be thinking of their children now, all grown up and no more the kids we once were. How much they must be missing us being kids and knowing nothing rather than being our own person, of claiming a little space from them and building our own worlds. It's so sad to grow up, I realised. I am thankful I will never have children. I don't think I can possibly live with the feeling that the one I gave birth to, or took care of, would someday create their own world and I wont be able to do anything but actually push the child toward doing exactly that. How sad it is to be parents, sometimes! Ah, I think I am rambling but these are thoughts that have come to my mind and stayed with me. This is certainly one of the best books I have read this year and I can't wait to read it in the years to come because I know I'd certainly feel so different about so many things discussed in the book.

Anne Tyler's French Braid opens with a chapter set in 2010 - a chapter that can stand alone as a short story, complete - that serves as a microcosm for the novel and introduces its concerns. This opening chapter is structurally and thematically necessary. It asks us to consider how much involvement in the lives of others is requisite or safe. How well are we capable of understanding one another? How do our roles in our families and communities change over time? Do our biases with regard to our own experiences stand in the way of our reaching fulfillment? What are the limits of our tolerance? Our flexibility? Rigidity verses flexibility is one of the novel's themes.Serena and James, a college-age couple, visit James's parents for the weekend. However, weekend plans devolve to a single Sunday because Serena does not want to sleep with James in his childhood bedroom on Saturday night. To her, doing so is akin to having sex in public, a violation of her modesty. James, the flexible character, digs in while Serena, the rigid character, bends over backward to make the situation work. Through the process, Serena comes to realize that friendly, open, handsome James is no real catch. And indeed, when the novel drops back in time to 1959, it is the last we see of him. At least this once, the contemporary character does not repeat the mistakes of her forbearers, of her grandmother, Mercy, in particular, who when she married pretty much accepted a pig in a poke. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the troubling notion of forgiveness and its opposite - not only grudge, which involves our will, but indelible impression, the kinks in the French braid - central to the characters' inability to understand one another or to change some aspects of their behavior.During the family's 1959 vacation, the patriarch, Robin, in some sort of he-man display intended to impress a father from one of the other lakeside cabins forces his small son, David, into the water, a sink-or-swim affair. As often happens with trauma, there is no recovery. The perp lies. The victim sulks in silence. Life rolls forward, the trauma folded into it, and it the old wound burns, possibly for a lifetime. So his father's betrayal at the lakeside - his using his son to show off - reverberates when Robin uses him again later, as an adult, to attract Mercy to attend what is really the family reunion discussed so many years before, an anniversary party.There is a lot of judgmental talk in Goodreads-land about Mercy's taking the cat she didn't want to a shelter. It shocked and upset me, too. Some readers see this act as a manifestation of her artistic "selfishness" - ruthlessness is more like it - partly because like Mercy's husband they do not take her art seriously. She is a woman so if she is an artist also, it must be a hobby. They pass judgement on her neglect of duty as a wife and parent - her work - barely acknowledging that she sees her work as other. If a fictional woman can hardly hold her head up among readers, what greater difficulty do real women encounter who abandon their family's demands and live as best they can as free beings? Her husband was foisted on her by circumstances and the limits of her own youth and she bore him for more than 20 years. She wasn't going to carry anyone else, ever again, even a cat that was no bother, a cat whose company she enjoyed. Human beings do this - apply a principle stubbornly to a case that does not matter because they are fighting for something else. Mercy is setting boundaries, perhaps not realizing they work both ways.That first chapter offers three possible reasons 9all somewhat melodramatic) a person (David) might be alienated from family - a suspicion that he is adopted, a suspicion that his elder siblings are the favorites, or having been the victim of an unforgivable speech (or act). One character leans toward the third cause as the most probable, but with Anne Tyler, we realize, we may be talking about all three. These possibilities are met in the penultimate chapter with a similar list: David was shorted a piece of cake, or he believed his sisters were spared mowing the lawn - or he suffered some trauma - a possibility that is instantly denied.Tyler, like her Russian models, is subtle. You have to look. But it is all there, her craft.

I always love books by Anne Tyler, and this one did not disappoint! As is usually the case, it involves a family in Baltimore. I love her characters, and dialogue.I rated it at 5 stars on Goodreads too.

This book is 342 pages, split into 8 chapters with a fairly large font.I'd just finished a tough book and was looking for something lighter. This was the only book available so I was hoping for an easier read. It actually isn't a light book but is very typical of Anne Tyler novels - about families and relationships. I had wanted to read this for sometime so was excited to start it.The book was first published in 2022 and starts in 2010.Anne Tyler has an ability to portray real life authentically. The book starts with a train journey where we go from the tiniest detail of the blue plastic bags on the track to a conversation about cultural stereotypes. She witches from the banality of a ticket collector to the future of a relationship in a completely natural and normal way - being recounted in the manner of actual conversations.We visit the family roughly every decade from the 1950s onward as they go through some sort of significant event. The family will reflect something about every family - you'll recognise your own situation even if only the smallest detail (and there are plenty of details to consider).The family evolves naturally, with babies coming along, growing and gradually taking the focus from the old folk who die.Towards the end of the novel, the 2020 pandemic is tackled and there is a brilliance about her approach, showing the worry alongside the normality of everyday life. Not many novels seem to have included the pandemic in such a relatable fashion and it is important that we remember the way that life carried on so calmly without all the hype that was portrayed in the media.Brilliant writing.

Ein Buch, in dem eigentlich nichts passiert und alles gesagt wird, weil jede Leserin das meiste davon schon selbst erlebt hat. Versteht man wohl am besten, wenn die eigenen Kinder schon erwachsen sind.

Anne Tyler dice sempre che ha smesso di scrivere…poi arriva un nuovo libro, eccellente come sempre. Storia di una famiglia attraverso gli anni. Non succedano grandissime tragedie, ma sono le piccole cose che ti toccano. Chi conosce già Anne Tyler si troverà bene con questo libro….chi non la conosce può benissimo iniziare qui.