Knotty problems: French Braid, by Anne Tyler, reviewed

Anne Tyler’s 24th novel French Braid opens in 2010 in Philadelphia train station. We find the teenage Serena, who has the ‘usual Garrett-family blue’ eyes, with her boyfriend James, waiting for a train back to Baltimore, where they’re at university together. Serena runs into her cousin Nicholas – although she’s not certain it’s him – and doesn’t seem especially keen to speak to him. There’s an awkward meeting; then Serena and James go to catch their train. A sense of unease hangs over the whole encounter. James speaks for the reader when he says: ‘Maybe there’s some deep dark secret in your family’s past.’ Uncovering this secret is at the heart of the novel. The ‘braid’ of the title is a metaphor for the intricate knots of love and obligation that bind families together but which may also come to feel like shackles.

From that near contemporary beginning, French Braid spools back through time, seeking to pinpoint the moment at which the wound in the Garrett family is first opened. It’s 1959 and the patriarch, Robin Garrett, has taken his family on their first ever holiday. His wife Mercy sees the break as an opportunity to work on her painting. Alice, the eldest daughter, is 17. For her, the trip is ‘nothing to look forward to’ and we perceive the days at Deep Creek Lake largely from her perspective. Lily, the middle girl, immediately falls in love with a preppy neighbour whose family own a lakeside holiday home. Then there’s David, still a child, a sensitive, tender soul. Already we can see the tensions that animate the family dynamic. As Alice says to herself, watching her parents and siblings by the lake: ‘A passerby would never guess the Garretts even knew each other. They looked so scattered, so lonesome.’