French Braid: A novel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread--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. "A quietly subversive novel, tackling fundamental assumptions about womanhood, motherhood and female aging." --The New York Times Book Review 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.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
The only mediocre chapter in the book is the first one, and that's because it feels like the book should at some point make that chapter more relevant. The book gives chapters to different family members' points of view about their very normal lives. At first this seems a bit dull, like it should be building up to something which never happens. At some point, it feels more like the episodes of Downton Abbey where there is quite the delight that nothing happened (e.g. the steeplechase episode, where... NOTHING HAPPENED!). It's the basic relationships and how we see each other. The first chapter I cried was the furniture delivery chapter, but it wasn't the last. At the end, I felt privileged to have seen their lives from different eyes.
This book had so much potential, it had everything I wanted, but it should have been twice as long. The characters were unique and interesting, and I felt like I didn't get to know them enough to care. Major events were skipped over, when I thought the author could sit in the situations for a bit longer. I love a complex multi generational family novel, and this checked all my boxes but still fell short. If I could read another 300 pages I would, but the novel as is does not cut it for me personally
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.