The deep dive into character is abandoned for a more impressionistic styleīut while the breadth of French Braid is to be commended, the depth of experience doesn't quite match. This scope offers much for the reader, not least varying perspectives within one family on seminal moments (a summer holiday the last child leaving for college a surprise 50th-anniversary party) and on the smaller, seemingly insignificant things that can, as another great chronicler of American lives, Mary Gaitskill, has written, "sit oddly close to a person's heart, and sometimes press against it painfully". The Garretts are classic Tyler: a functioning-not-functioning clan, whose lives are deftly rendered on a broad canvas that gives the outline of multiple generations. As with these titles, French Braid charts the experiences of one family over decades, in this case from the 1950s to the present troubled times of the pandemic.
At first glance, Anne Tyler’s new novel is a return to the formula that won her critical and commercial acclaim for novels such as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, The Amateur Marriage and the Booker-shortlisted A Spool of Blue Thread.
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