A work of quiet, unassuming genius.
Anne Tyler is that rare creature: a prolific and very popular novelist who is also highly respected. She has been short-listed and won the Booker, won the Pulitzer, and had many of her books adapted for the screen. So the news of a new novel from Tyler is a cause for great rejoicing.
French Braid takes Tyler once again into families: her territory of expertise. It opens with college student Serena in a train station with her boyfriend. She looks up and declares that she thinks the man over there is her cousin. Her boyfriend is somewhat taken aback that Serena only thinks it’s her cousin, and can’t understand how she could be so unsure. It is indeed her cousin Nicholas, and a slightly awkward encounter ensues. Once on their train, Serena’s boyfriend continues to interrogate her about her odd family, and their seeming lack of closeness. Eventually she gives up trying to explain.
“The fact was, she reflected, that even when the Garretts did get together, it never seemed to take, so to speak.”
With the next chapter, Tyler takes us back to 1959, when the Garrett family goes on their first, and possibly only, vacation. And so the story of this disparate, related group of people unfolds.
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. She pins down those seemingly quotidian moments that shape a life as much, if not more, than the big events. Like a good mother, she loves all her characters, but doesn’t take any nonsense from them. She knows when they are behaving badly. She also has an extraordinary ability to allow a character to unfold, to age, to mellow, or to become more hardened. It is no mere cliché to say that when you are reading Tyler, her characters become part of your life.
But don’t mistake French Braid for a cloying testament to the fact that all families love each other deep down. Tyler never buys into that garbage. She is gentle and humane with her families, but never needs to go all Mayberry in order to prove it. And she writes with sharpness, wit, and humour. This is a novelist who never wastes a word.
Above all this is a wonderful read. 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.
If you have never read Tyler before, then French Braid is a perfect, and perfectly delightful, introduction.
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
This review is the opinion of the reviewer and not Glam Adelaide.
Distributed by: Penguin Books Australia
Released: March 2022
RRP: $29.99
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