French Braid: A novel

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICENamed one of the best books of 2022 by Oprah Daily • NPR • The Times"For a story that allows you to forget about your own troubles for a moment and get caught up in someone else's, you can't go wrong with Anne Tyler." —The Globe and Mail"Following the Garrett family from the 1950s to our pandemic present, this novel focuses on richly-imagined inner lives." —Toronto Star"In her twenty-fourth novel, the iconic chronicler of the daily lives of Baltimore families zooms out to include multiple generations of the Garrett clan. This exquisite story is Tyler at her best and most ambitious, exploring what we're left with when all the choices have been made, the children raised and the dreams realized or abandoned." —The New York Times Book Review"Wistful, elegiac. . . . A moving meditation on the passage of time. . . . For all its charm, French Braid is a quietly subversive novel, tackling fundamental assumptions about womanhood, motherhood and female aging." —Jennifer Hagh, The New York Times Book Review"No one handles multi-character gatherings better than Baltimore-based Anne Tyler. . . . French Braid . . . delivers a welcome variety of distractions from the worry and anguish of the present world. . . . The novel's strength is in the delightful ways that lives are interwoven, much like a beautifully tied French braid." —Winnipeg Free Press"Gorgeous, charming, profound and written with such lightness of touch." —Marian Keyes"French Braid is Anne Tyler at her surgical, spare best." —Nigella Lawson, via Twitter"Lovely. . . . The characters' hopes and struggles are relatable, and the novel shines with Tyler’s signature compassion and comfort." —TIME"Subtly, gently, the iconic novelist nudges into new territory, pulling back from the quotidian and giving us an elegy to what falls away when our kids grow and age and grapple with what remains, and what will never be." —Oprah Daily"Every time we meet the Garretts in a new chapter, about 10 years have passed. The effect is neither jarring nor schematic, more like the gentle turning of leaves in a photo album. Children go off to college, graduates get married, spouses have babies—a perfectly natural turn of events, anchored by captivating snapshots of a growing family." —The Washington Post"Few writers are so widely loved and respected as the creator of 'family novels', a genre Tyler has perfected by bringing her quiet wisdom and gentle prose style to bear on the hidden corners of domestic life. [French Braid] is Tyler at her most Tyler-ish: pleasant and inoffensive, yet surprisingly deep and moving." —The Times"A tender and sprawling saga. . . . Tyler has a keen eye for the way small moments can have unpredictable effects in a family’s understanding of one another. . . . Thoroughly enjoyable. . . . Funny, poignant, generous, not shying away from death and disappointment but never doomy or overwrought, it suggests there’s always new light to be shed, whatever the situation, with just another turn of the prism." —The Guardian "Anne Tyler's new novel, French Braid, proves once again that nobody can write about small family moments quite like she can." —Real Simple"Tyler is especially good on the balance of the 'little kindnesses' and 'little cruelties' that suffuse familial relationships. Her portrayal of the bonds forged across the generations between grandparents and grandchildren is tender and acute. . . . French Braid is a novel full of compassion for the human condition by a writer confident enough not to pin everything down and to trust her story to work its quiet magic." —Financial Times"French Braid spans over sixty years in the lives of a Baltimore family and displays [Tyler's] typically astute attention to how seemingly small moments and insignificant events resonate over time to shape identities both personal and familial." —Boston Globe"Another masterclass by our greatest chronicler of family life. . . . In a short sentence or two, Tyler possesses the uncanny ability to home in on a particular detail, or a particular incident and, through them, to reveal an entire world of thought and emotion. . . . There are many authors today who try to emulate her technique, but none of them comes close to the lightness of touch, the accuracy of her ear, or the profundity of her vision." —Daily Mail "Entrancing. . . . Nobody writes better about families than Anne Tyler. . . . Tyler has that rare ability to do much with what seems little, to bring the ordinary and usually unregarded lives of ordinary people to life and make them matter." —The Scotsman "[Anne Tyler's] steady gaze on the ordinary American family is unparalleled, [with] her detached yet masterful style. . . . Tyler, now 81, is the doyenne of creating a sense of grandeur out of ordinary, unremarkable lives. . . . The gentleness is the thing; in a world where readers gorge on clickbait, social media bites and quick reads, Tyler's pace is becoming even more remarkable with every passing year. Each page is soaked with her trademark empathy." —Independent (Ireland)"Intricate. . . . French Braid is a family saga of uncommon subtlety and grace, a novel which shows that, at 80, Anne Tyler is still amongst the very best writers around." —The Spectator"Each chapter is a perfect vignette, following a member of the multi-generational cast in a close third person. . . . In the final chapter, Tyler takes the risk of setting the action in the Covid-hit spring of 2020 and totally pulls it off. . . . Deft and graceful, French Braid is utterly convincing. Fifty-eight years since she published her first novel, Tyler continues to capture life's joys, contradictions and ordinary heartbreaks with humour and precision." —Prospect"A brilliant and insightful journey deep into one Baltimore family's shortcomings. . . . Heartwarming and hilarious. . . . Trust us when we say you won't want to miss this one." —DailyHive"If you were only to read a page of French Braid, you might wonder where the welter of seemingly incidental colour was leading. . . . Not for a moment, however, does Tyler ignore the bigger picture. Her laser-like focus goes hand in hand with a firm grasp of the background against which events unfold, be it the historical, geographical, political or social landscape. . . . Few are better at covering the passage of time, and hinting at the shifting cultural climate in a single sentence. . . . Not a line of this, or her other fiction, is surplus. Every scrap of conversation is meaningful." —The Herald (Scotland)"A thought-provoking, eminently readable novel, one where the Baltimore author's trademark perception and eye for life's absurdities are in abundance. . . . An engaging, enjoyable read, full of wisdom and fine feeling on family life." —Irish Times"Enchanting. . . . As with so many of Tyler's creations, [these characters] stay with you a long time. . . . Throughout it all is Tyler's attentive ear for American life. . . . Though centered in Baltimore, the story nonetheless reaches out beyond it, just as the characters, deceivingly simple, reveal truths about life that are anything but." —Washington City Paper"Anne Tyler is a master of interpersonal drama and intricate depictions of characters' lives. . . . In French Braid, her skilled storytelling once again takes center stage. . . . Each chapter is as well-crafted as a short story and reveals the heart of its central character. Tyler weaves these individual tales together to build something even greater, and like the braid of the novel's title, this interpersonal family drama becomes more substantial as its pieces combine." —BookPage"[Tyler's] latest Baltimore-anchored, lushly imagined, psychologically intricate, virtually inhalable novel is a stepping-stone tale, with each finely composed section . . . jumping forward in time. . . . At every leap, Tyler balances gracefully between tenderness and piquant humor, her insights into human nature luminous." —Booklist"More lovely work from Tyler, still vital and creative. . . . In her 24th novel, Tyler once again unravels the tangled threads of family life. This familiar subject always seems fresh in her hands because Tyler draws her characters and their interactions in such specific and revealing detail. . . . [She] understands that the domestic world can contain the universe." —Kirkus Reviews"[A] well-crafted look at a family that inexplicably comes apart over several decades. . . . Tyler’s focus on character development proves fruitful. . . .  As always, Tyler offers both comfort and surprise." —Publishers Weekly"Emotionally astute. . . . [Tyler] expertly renders the Garretts' history in a handful of observant set pieces. . . that reveal both the love and tension that rest uneasily aside each other in this unexceptional family. . . . Virtually anyone who has experienced the pleasures and pains of family life will find something to identify with." —Bookreporter"Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life." —Rachel Joyce "Such joyous immersion, I lost myself, and loved this superbly imperfect family." —Tessa Hadley "A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed." —Victoria Hislop