French Braid is Anne Tyler’s 24th novel
(Picture: )I’ve been Anne Tyler-ed. After finishing French Braid, the 24th novel from the formidable American novelist, I was going about my life thinking nothing particularly radical had happened to me. And then I thought about it, and I thought about it some more, and I realised – boom – she really is a master.
The novel introduces us to the Garretts, an unremarkable family from Baltimore. We begin in 2010, when granddaughter Serena spots her cousin in a train station; her boyfriend is bemused at the fact she’s hesitant about saying hello to him. “Oh, what makes a family not work?” she wonders. The question is like a prayer that hangs over the book. Nothing deeply traumatic happens in this family –in fact, it’s the nothingness that conjures a kind of unshiftable cloud of pain and loss. The Garretts are a family that don’t really know each other, nor what to say to one another.
