“Oh, I wish I’d known,” says Mercy, the artistic, independent-minded matriarch of the Garrett family, when her husband Robin arranges a surprise party for their 50th wedding anniversary: “I could have been looking forward to it all this time!” It is a quietly painful moment. After her youngest child David left for college, Mercy decamped from her marital home to her artist’s studio. Her separation from Robin in all but name is tactfully never mentioned by the family.
Written in seven parts and set mainly in Baltimore, Anne Tyler’s 24th novel spans six decades and four generations, opening with an awkward chance encounter between two of the youngest members of the fold—estranged cousins Serena and Nicholas bump into each other at a train station. “Oh, what makes a family not work?” wonders Serena, as Tyler hints at dark secrets. It turns out that an earlier incident on a family holiday makes ripples for years.
Each chapter is a perfect vignette, following a member of the multi-generational cast in a close third person: David brings his “friend”—straight-talking Greta—to meet the family at a tense Easter dinner; Mercy and her granddaughter Candle take an ill-fated trip to New York after bonding over a shared love of art. In the final chapter, Tyler takes the risk of setting the action in the Covid-hit spring of 2020 and totally pulls it off. For 68-year-old David and his grandson Benny, lockdown leads to reunion rather than isolation.
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.
