But Tyler's gift is that each story, each character is distinct, even as she builds on themes from one book to the next. Now, if we were talking about any other writer, you would be excused for wondering if they might be stuck in a rut.

And the majority of Anne's Tyler's 24 books are set in Baltimore.

The majority of Anne Tyler's 24 books are about family. But before she headed out, Mary Louise recorded this interview with author Anne Tyler. Knopf, 244 pages, $27.In other parts of the program, you'll hear our co-host Mary Louise Kelly reporting from Tbilisi. Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Star Tribune. 'You think you're free of them,' David notes, 'but you're never really free the ripples are crimped in forever.' But the ties are not so easily undone, and the effects of family are lasting.

Without trust, without confidences, family members unbraid themselves from each other and drift apart. how something so obvious was never, ever talked about.' Or course, earlier, their son-in-law had noted, 'It was bizarre. Late in the novel, Robin tells himself that the greatest accomplishment of his life was that 'not a single one of his children guessed that Mercy wasn't living at home anymore.' Their grandson Eddie doesn't tell anyone he's in a romantic relationship with his longtime partner Claude, so Eddie's aunt does her frantic best to pretend to be in the dark. The whole complicated arrangement of keeping secrets and not asking questions filters down to Mercy and Robin's grandchildren. Like so many Tyler characters, he is active through passivity. He spends college summers away from home he gets married without telling a soul. It's easier, David figures, to avoid the family than to confront them, and so, like his mother, he leaves without ever saying he is going. 'French Braid' is filled with piercing observation. It is lines like that one - seemingly tossed off by the omniscient narrator, a great skill of Tyler's - that bring heft to this largely plotless book. 'Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!' Tyler writes. And not even a simple three-strand braid more like a complicated French braid, one that takes in more and more strands as it progresses.īehaviors and attitudes from one generation are braided into the next, and so the Garrett children and grandchildren absorb their parents' need for avoidance. The surface remains smooth, the marriage endures.įamilies, as Tyler has shown so brilliantly over her long career - she is 80 now - are private, convoluted things, twisted and knotted together over generations like a braid. Life is easier with no confrontation, no arguing.

French braid by anne tyler