Twitter: review is the opinion of the reviewer and not Glam Adelaide.Description NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - From the beloved 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. If you have never read Tyler before, then French Braid is a perfect, and perfectly delightful, introduction. This is a novel that will pull you in, make you laugh, make you think, and leave you wanting to know just a little bit more about all the characters. This is a novelist who never wastes a word.Ībove all this is a wonderful read. And she writes with sharpness, wit, and humour. She is gentle and humane with her families, but never needs to go all Mayberry in order to prove it. It is no mere cliché to say that when you are reading Tyler, her characters become part of your life.īut don’t mistake French Braid for a cloying testament to the fact that all families love each other deep down. She also has an extraordinary ability to allow a character to unfold, to age, to mellow, or to become more hardened. Like a good mother, she loves all her characters, but doesn’t take any nonsense from them. She pins down those seemingly quotidian moments that shape a life as much, if not more, than the big events. One of Tyler’s points of genius is that she is able to paint detailed portraits of relationships where not each participant in that relationship feels the same way one is more invested that the other, or loves more than the other, or needs space more than the other. And so the story of this disparate, related group of people unfolds. With the next chapter, Tyler takes us back to 1959, when the Garrett family goes on their first, and possibly only, vacation. “The fact was, she reflected, that even when the Garretts did get together, it never seemed to take, so to speak.” Eventually she gives up trying to explain. Once on their train, Serena’s boyfriend continues to interrogate her about her odd family, and their seeming lack of closeness. It is indeed her cousin Nicholas, and a slightly awkward encounter ensues.

Her boyfriend is somewhat taken aback that Serena only thinks it’s her cousin, and can’t understand how she could be so unsure.

She looks up and declares that she thinks the man over there is her cousin. It opens with college student Serena in a train station with her boyfriend. So the news of a new novel from Tyler is a cause for great rejoicing.įrench Braid takes Tyler once again into families: her territory of expertise. She has been short-listed and won the Booker, won the Pulitzer, and had many of her books adapted for the screen. Anne Tyler is that rare creature: a prolific and very popular novelist who is also highly respected.

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