They hardly ever venture far from home, but in some ways they have never been further apart. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. Beautifully read too.A major new novel from the beloved prize-winning author - a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of today. So much to enjoy, think about and remember. Yes they do! Robin remembers the ‘mute damp misery’ of his mother abandoned by his father ‘curled like a comma on the sofa’ throughout his childhood, making him the man he grew to be.

The many similes are sewn in so subtly they can be missed: fungus on a tree stick out like CDs when you press eject. Mercy muses in passing on marriage on how the quality initially found most attractive in a spouse can become the most loathed with time. It takes tremendous skill to create these family networks, to maintain interest and to trigger the listener’s thoughts and empathies by a passing comment or a turn of phrase. She is equally insightful on men as well as women and of course the subtle complex relationships between them. There’s the joys of little children and the visceral sense of loss as they turn into sometimes disappointing adults balanced by the comforts of grand-parenting. Listeners will identify with many themes, marriages and situations: Mercy breaks away from her husband when the children have left home, not because she can’t stand him, but because she wants to paint in a studio of her own and be HER. A natural death (I won’t spoil it, there are bound to be many but you’ll know which one) is truly shocking. Tyler’s skill is in making ordinary lives totally involving and so startlingly real in all their complexities that they live on beyond the page. Thus 7 year-old David, a quirky solitary little boy on the family lake-side holiday at the beginning, ricochets through life and at the end is a fond grandfather, never having recovered from his father’s harsh misjudged attempt to make him swim on that childhood trip. Anne Tyler born in 1941 is especially qualified to write this poignant chart of the Garett family through six decades from 1959 right up to the Pandemic, revealing how the sprawling legacy of members’ traits and actions ripple through the generations, braided together as in a French braid. Sixty years of a family plaited together I loved this and found it profoundly moving.

French braid tyler