That’s probably because it shares similar traits in terms of its focus on a dysfunctional family and the way chance events shape people’s lives and how sibling relationships are dictated by power dynamics beyond their control. I am a long-time Anne Tyler fan so it’s no surprise I would like this book, but I reckon it’s the best one she’s written since 1982’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, my favourite Tyler novel. This is how I felt when I read Anne Tyler’s latest novel, French Braid. Before you know it, you’ve read half the book - or at least made substantial inroads. You pick it up, start reading and become so immersed in the story you lose all sense of time. Sometimes a novel just strikes the right mood. (Mar.Fiction – paperback Chatto & Windus 256 pages 2022. As always, Tyler offers both comfort and surprise. There are no big reveals, but Tyler’s focus on character development proves fruitful a reunion organized by the wistful Robin in the ’90s is particularly affecting, as is a coda with David during the Covid-19 pandemic. Once the parents become empty nesters, Mercy spends most of her days and nights in her neighboring studio. This also turns out not to be Serena’s story, as Tyler leaves the young couple for late 1950s Baltimore, where Alice Serena’s mother, Lily and David are raised by their mismatched parents, a socially awkward plumber named Robin and begrudging housewife Mercy, who wants to be an artist.
But the explanation, as it happens, is not so simple.
“You guys give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘once removed,’ ” James says, and wonders if “some deep dark secret” might explain why Serena rarely sees her aunt Alice or her uncle David, Nicholas’s father. Serena Drew, a 20-something Baltimore grad student traveling with her boyfriend, James, thinks she recognizes her cousin, Nicholas Garrett, in the crowd at a Philadelphia train station in 2010, but she can’t say for sure because she hasn’t seen him for years. Tyler ( Redhead by the Side of the Road) returns with a dry and well-crafted look at a family that inexplicably comes apart over several decades.
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