I am a member of the Dandenong Library and the Reading Circle that meets once a month. I received a copy of Anne Tyler’s new book as a present. I am a big fan of her books and I think I have read all of them. Anyone who has read her books will know they are all very similar and all set in the U.S city of Baltimore, usually about a member of a family that is very ordinary, just a little like us. If this seems boring, it is strangely not. All the characters are very similar, just with different names, but I must get on with this review of French Braid.
It is once again set in Baltimore. We meet the Garrett family through the eyes of Serena, who with her boyfriend is returning home from meeting his parents for the first time. They meet her cousin who she hardly recognises. Her boyfriend scoffs at this as he is very close to his family and knows all his cousins. Over the chapters of the book, we revisit three generations of the Garretts to see maybe why this is not the case for them. One of the central characters is Mercy, Serena’s Grandmother who we meet in 1959 on a family holiday with husband Robin and children Alice, Lily and David. We then see over the years Mercy’s life with her family, and how when her children are all grown up, she moves out of the family home. As I said the characters in Anne Tyler’s books are very similar, I always identify with the mother figure, but this time I didn’t in Mercy. Mercy was a selfish and unlikeable person. In fact, I didn’t have any fondness for any of the family and I just didn’t connect with them.
The book is about too many things to write in this short review but what I took from it was that Mercy was experiencing the ‘empty nest syndrome’. The way she dealt with it was just not believable and left me feeling slightly sad and unsatisfied. As with all of her books there is no real ending, she just places you in a family and their life.
French Braid is written in the same wonderful style of Anne Tyler, but for me it was not one of her best. I encourage you to have a look at some of her earlier titles which I found more enjoyable.
Find French Braid by Anne Tayler
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