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

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.

I liked her homely style of writing. None of the characters did anything important but lived their lives just as ordinary people dealing with the ups and downs of family life. It reminded me of the books by Elizabeth Strout which I really liked. Life in America is different to the way we live in Scotland and I was intrigued by the differences.

A story about a family. Sport of a composite look at various characters throughout from the viewpoint of each in various chapters. This speech left me not really knowing any of them in depth. A bit of an odd novel; not one I’ll rave about but good enough to finish.

After a rather disjointed start - it went back in time from Serena and her boyfriend rather abruptly, however this was a very enjoyable book. I enjoyed the family dynamics and wished the book was a little longer. I thought Mercy and Robin were such interesting characters.

I love Anne Tyler, but this novel fell a little short. It's difficult to put my finger on it, but the story starts in the near past, then moves back a couple of generations before getting to the recent past. The lives of the family members are filled in and we see the trajectories of a few lives. Perhaps there are too many characters, and we needed to focus on just one or two? We also seemed to be a litle devoid of the heartwarming or laughter-evoking interactions that mark her work out.

Like so many of Tyler’s novels, this is just a record of a family’s life and relationships, but every book is full of wonderful scenarios and dialogue - a complicated storyline isn’t needed. I just love her writing and feel bereft when I finish a Tyler novel. “French Braid” may not be her absolute best, but I still enjoyed it enormously - so witty and wise. Recommended highly.

I always enjoy Ann tyler.. Themes as usual involve coping with change, in this book she has a further theme of influences over generations.

In French Braid most of the time nothing much happens but each member of the family has such a story to tell that you can’t help falling in love with them all. From Candle to boy Robbie and girl Robbie and all the rest they leave a lasting impression of their quirks of characters. I savoured each page and am still thinking about them long after I finished 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.

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.

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

Anne Tyler provides the antídote to complex novels. Interesting, poignant and most importantly, entertaining. Looking forward to her next novel.