They looked so scattered, and so lonesome.”

A passerby would never guess the Garretts even knew each other. “Even her father, a few yards away from her, was swimming now toward shore. I’m adding links to these reviews plus all the reviews I am alerted to to the project page, so do pop there to see what other people have thought, too. If you’re reading along with the project or just this one or whatever, please do share your thoughts in the comments at the bottom or add a link to your review on your blog or Goodreads, etc. I’m mainly glad I’ve finally read it – and it was a good one, although curiously, I found myself in floods of tears at the end, even though the ending isn’t violently sad!

I’ve not seen any other reviews of it yet apart from the ones on NetGalley, so I’m looking forward to finding out what other bloggers I follow think of it. I think I still have a paper copy coming but I managed to nab an e-book from NetGalley and plunged into it as my first March read. She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.While I was doing my Anne Tyler 2021 project, I heard the news that she was about to publish another novel, “French Braid”. Her other novels include A Spool of Blue Thread, French Braid, Clock Dance, The Accidental Tourist, and Redhead by the Side of the Road. In 1989, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Breathing Lessons. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.įull 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.Īnne Tyler is the author of more than twenty novels. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family’s orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin.

They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. A major new novel from the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author-a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family’s foibles, from the 1950s up to our pandemic present.

Book french braid