It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. But it turns out family life is impossible to escape - particularly when it's in your past.

When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed' VICTORIA HISLOP Her sheer brilliance makes it all seems so effortless' GRAHAM NORTON 'A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. The glorious Sunday Times bestseller follows one family's joys and heartbreaks, mistakes and secrets, from the 1950s right up to today 'Gorgeous, charming, profound, and written with such lightness of touch' MARIAN KEYES 'A perfect work of fiction' MEG MASON 'She is and always will be my favourite author' LIANE MORIARTY 'Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life' RACHEL JOYCE 'Anne Tyler really is the best.

Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.įull of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close-yet how unknowable-every family is to itself.When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. A funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one Baltimore family’s foibles, from a boyfriend with a red Chevy in the 1950s up to a longed-for reunion with a grandchild.

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