French Braid, Anne Tyler, author; Kimberly Farr, narrator
No other author that I know can tell a story in quite the same way as Anne Tyler. Her novels come alive as they reveal the reality of our own lives. She can take a mundane moment and make it magical, meaningful and prescient. Although at first, the novel moves slowly, it gains pace as the characters pass through what may seem like the most prosaic moments of life, and yet, those very same moments become predictive of their future. We witness a family work, play, love, make choices, and sometimes march in place, but mostly, we see them grow and adapt to the different situations that face them, just like ordinary people do in their ordinary lives, because they have to do that, don’t they?
French Braid follows the lives of three generations of the Garrett family, simple people living ordinary lives. Each character has its own unique personality, and eventually, they all blend together to highlight all of the personalities we might ever encounter. The reader actually watches each of them flourish or fail, in their own way, and in their own time, but each soon finds the happiness they search for and deserve. All of the warts and foibles of life are portrayed as birth, death, aging, freedom, independence, individual rights, love, relationships, jealousies, lifestyles, loyalty and more are probed by the author, so quietly, that the reader is not aware of it until suddenly, there is a moment of revelation. Life happens to them, as it does to us, often without us noticing, and often without our input. We have to deal with unplanned moments and moments that are planned that do not go as expected. These characters are immersed in that cauldron with their own individual experiences. Each character’s behavior will make the reader pause and think, would I have done that? Was that appropriate? Is that acceptable? Ordinary questions become profound and through each succeeding generation the same questions are often explored, so delicately, that we are hardly aware of all the character traits the author exposes. There is no fanfare at all. The ideas simply come to life. It is a subtle exploration and exposure of family and relationships in all their incarnations. As the characters age, they have different needs and the moments of grief and joy that come into their lives, are the same as those that come into ours.
From about 1940, with the marriage of Mercy and Robin, a time when women were really only housewives, to 2020, when women are so much more independent and free to move around to reach their potential, the reader witnesses this family emerge and grow in many different directions. As we follow their progression, their different kinds of love and their trials, as they try to accept each other as spaces grow between them, as they naturally distance themselves from each other, and yet return to each other as time demands, we witness, through them, our own lives and the passage of time. We watch values and mores change as the years go by, and we, as they, alter our own relationships and needs to adjust to the new demands placed on us. Still, we may sometimes stop and wonder if the changes are all as positive as the author seems to imply.
The author is so perceptive. Is the Garret family like your own? Do you have siblings that have moved away and gone in different directions? Have you had the courage to make changes in your life that make you happier or are you stuck in the same humdrum state because you are afraid to move forward? Do you have relationships with people based on responsibility, habit, or true need and desire? Does every spouse hunger for more and experience disappointment that cannot be discussed? How many spouses plot secretly to make changes in their lives? Is every sibling jealous? Is there always a favorite child, even unknowingly?
The one question I was left with was this: Could Mercy have really gotten away with the changes she made in her own life, without making a ripple in the stream, or would there have been rifts in the family with each member taking sides? Are we really that understanding of each other’s needs to forgive such transgressions, or if not transgressions, deviations from the norm, because Anne Tyler “does normal” expertly! Even the subtle use of Robin as both a girl’s and boy’s name, the interjection of Eddie and Claude’s relationship, so casually at the very end, simply happens and ushers in the present as opposed to the past. She even often injects a quiet kind of humor into the pages. The wit will make your lips curl up, but will not make you laugh out loud. Instead, as it is in your own life, you will just enjoy the moment.
As Mercy searches for the soul of the house in her paintings, the author has the characters search for their own souls as they go through the growing pains of each day of their ordinary lives. Tyler has softly led us through decades to witness the changes that have taken place in our world, and it is a journey that is really enjoyable. Even the title is significant, for she has taken the hair style of the child, Emily, the daughter of an immigrant from Scandinavia, an older woman, a scandalous divorcee, who married son David, and has placed her in a position of importance, making them all more significant, simply with the title.
There is no foul language, no erotic sex to titillate the reader; there are no unnecessary words at all. It is simply a wonderful story, as most of her stories are, because she tells her stories as if they are occurring right in front of us, before our very eyes, or right in our very own lives.