lokroma reviewed French Braid by Anne Tyler
Review of 'French Braid' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Not one of Tyler's best efforts. The familiar Baltimore family is there with lots of quirks, including a mom separating from family to assert her independence, but not enough underlying tension this time for me. Her writing seems simpler and less interesting, and there is too much homely comfort and too little of the edge that many of her previous books achieved, often approaching the corny and sentimental.
French braid is a metaphor for families -- the crimps formed by the braid are the wrinkles that never quite straighten out over the generations. The Garrett family and their wrinkles are followed through four generations in a largely benign story of a pretty typical American middle class family. One of the crimps occurs early in the book when Mercy, Robin, and their three children take a vacation for a couple of weeks on a lake. The youngest child, David, has a …
Not one of Tyler's best efforts. The familiar Baltimore family is there with lots of quirks, including a mom separating from family to assert her independence, but not enough underlying tension this time for me. Her writing seems simpler and less interesting, and there is too much homely comfort and too little of the edge that many of her previous books achieved, often approaching the corny and sentimental.
French braid is a metaphor for families -- the crimps formed by the braid are the wrinkles that never quite straighten out over the generations. The Garrett family and their wrinkles are followed through four generations in a largely benign story of a pretty typical American middle class family. One of the crimps occurs early in the book when Mercy, Robin, and their three children take a vacation for a couple of weeks on a lake. The youngest child, David, has a mysterious and upsetting experience in the water with his father nearby. What exactly happened is not revealed until the end of the book, and is not referred to in the intervening pages. If Tyler had worked the impact of the event more fully into the novel, I believe it would have been a more successful book. Still, it is a nice story about the resilience of family and comforting to read in these difficult times.
