It's just one example of how this family has drifted apart while still remaining roughly connected. The rift this causes is subtle yet severe in creating a longstanding distance which is never entirely broached. Mercy and her husband Robin's son David doesn't conform to his father's masculine expectations. These are familiar figures who are of a certain type – yet they are also unique and distinct. Women side-eye the choices of dishes brought to the dining table. Men in the family revert to bland discussions about the traffic getting there. Tyler presents instances when they do see each other with a wonderful amount of detail and dialogue which captures all the awkwardness and uncertainty of people who are united through coincidence of birth rather than natural affection. Though they are reunited for some holidays and anniversaries, other occasions such as weddings aren't always marked with the traditional get together. Gradually we come to understand how this family has maintained loose bonds while living separately and largely unknown to each other. Similar to Tyler's “A Spool of Blue Thread” we get a broader picture of these individuals by seeing brief snapshots of them in different periods of time. The novel begins in 2010 before leaping back to a rare Garrett family holiday in 1959 and skipping forward through the decades alighting focus on several different members of the household. It's an excellent compromise for a riddle that has been threaded throughout so much of this author's meaningful body of work. Mercy's living arrangement mostly goes unspoken amongst the family so she maintains her position while achieving a kind of independent freedom. She's developed a technique for painting a family's home by focusing on one aspect which is represented in high detail while the rest remains a bit of a blur. Once their youngest child has flown the coop she embarks on pursuing her passion for painting and gradually moves out of the family home into her artist's studio. But her natural domain isn't the domestic. Though in her younger days she fantasized about walking out on her life she has loyally loved and supported her husband and three children for decades. Mercy is the matriarch of the Garrett clan. In her latest novel “French Braid” we have an example of a character who, in a sense, has it both ways. There's a persistent tension for many characters between maintaining the life they've built and leaving it behind.

Taking on responsibilities / ridding oneself of all responsibility.” This is certainly noticeable in many of Tyler's novels – most notably in “Ladder of Years”. In an entry from 1977 in “The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates” she remarks that “Anne Tyler's imagination turns (instinctively?) toward her central theme of staying-in-one-place / running-away.

Reviews of french braid by anne tyler