French Braid Audiobook By Anne Tyler cover art

French Braid

A novel

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French Braid

By: Anne Tyler
Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Spool of Blue Thread—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.

“A quietly subversive novel, tackling fundamental assumptions about womanhood, motherhood and female aging.” —The New York Times Book Review

The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation.

Full 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. Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sagas Women's Fiction Heartfelt Witty Funny

Dear Listener,

What compelled me to write 70 years of a fictional family's history?
"Some years ago, a friend who’d developed an interest in genealogy offered to look into my family tree. He already had some information about my father’s relatives, but he knew less about my mother’s, so he sat down with me one day to see what information I could give him.
'Well,' I said, 'there’s my mother’s sister, Aunt Marjorie. She lives in—'
'Oh, she’s dead,' he told me.
I said, 'She is?' Then after a moment I said, 'Well, there’s Aunt Rose Ann; she’s the widow of my mother’s—'
'She’s dead too,' he said.
I sat back and looked at him.
How could I have missed hearing this? It was true that I’d never seen much of them, but why hadn’t I learned they were gone?
Or, as Serena says in French Braid, what makes a family not work?
I’m not talking about explosive breakups, or disinheritances, or never-speaking-again situations. I just wonder why some apparently amiable families fail to stay connected. And many of them, I suspect, couldn’t answer that themselves.
That’s why I started writing about the Garretts, the family at the center of French Braid. No villains, no heroes; just your average people. I hope you’ll grow fond of them, in spite of their obvious flaws." – Anne Tyler, writer of French Braid
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Wonderful , classic Anne Tyler. Gives us a a story of generations of a family, good the bad and the ugly ! Thorough enjoyed listening to it !

Great Family

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I felt like the story didn’t go anywhere. Wasn’t a fan of the narrators voice.

Was hoping for more.

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I wished that Mercy and Robin had been able to communicate better about their split. I felt like the story ended when Mercy died. Overall, I enjoyed it.

Good story!

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As a native Baltimorean I am a fan of Tyler’s books. This one, however, was kind of meh for me. The Garrett family was not really likeable or worth caring about. It seemed implausible that the source of their distance and lack of familial bonds was a mystery to each of them - none of these family members seemed to even know each other much less like each other. The opening segue of one cousin sort of recognizing another cousin at a train station struck me as somehow both too obvious and unresolved at the end of the book. I did listen all the way through, hoping for something. I just don’t think it was her best work.

Not my favorite Anne Tyler

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For another beautifully written book Anne Tyler never disappoints. Another family story that is quirky and sad, but real.

Thanks

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