The loneliness of happy families
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Tyler has crafted a well-respected career from the small dramas inherent in ordinary families. Her new (24th) novel, “French Braid,” is the story of the fictional Garretts, crisscrossing from the 1950s to the life-altering days of 2020.
While following their traditional family gatherings — a summer vacation, a birthday, an anniversary, a holiday dinner (or “supper,” as Tyler always calls it) — I got the distinct sensation of leafing through someone’s thick photo album. So your enjoyment of this book (and her work in general) is dependent on how well you tolerate other people’s family snapshots. What they reveal, what they don’t.
It begins in a busy train station, circa 2010, with the family’s college-age granddaughter and her boyfriend. She mentions she might’ve seen her cousin but prefers to pretend she did not see him. Her boyfriend, however, hunts him down and brings him over for some awkward small talk. After they part ways the bewildered boyfriend says, “You guys give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘once removed.’”
This serves as a bit of foreshadowing. We learn the Garretts are not huggers — physically, verbally, emotionally.
We meet many members of the clan, but we spend the most time with Mercy and Robin Garrett. Married in the mid-1940s, they settle into a life of routines in postwar America. She is a housewife, mother and frustrated painter; her husband runs a hardware store.
With abundant descriptions of daily chores, including what’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner, one thing is clear: The wife is not as happy as the husband in this domestic arrangement. But in increments, with unwavering determination, Mercy creates a separate life for herself in a nearby over-the-garage apartment. It offers her independence as well as a place for artistic fulfillment. Is she brave? Is she selfish?
“French Braid” does not present the kind of dysfunction we often see in modern fiction, especially in movies and TV. We do get marriages, births, deaths and minor family tiffs, but there is no abuse or neglect, no alcoholism, no profanity. In that sense the book is old-fashioned.
The Garretts however are not quite “The Waltons.” There are small hurtful estrangements in this family, and characters are left wondering why. Tyler makes shrewd observations about how we are products of our generation, our upbringing, our personalities. We surely recognize the family (maybe our own) who prefers to ignore that which make us uncomfortable. “It was bizarre … how something so obvious was never, ever talked about,” reflects a Garrett son-in-law.
Most readers will smile at the dynamics of Garrett family gettogethers. The grandfather from one generation insists on talking about traffic as soon as the company arrives, but Tyler shows how in the next generation, and the next, this behavior lives on. Just as an aptitude for mechanics or painting — even if it skips a generation — will pop out like freckles in that family tree.
The early days of COVID-19 provide (same as it did in the real world) the perfect excuse to create pods of togetherness, an opportunity to reinforce family connections. It’s not surprising Anne Tyler — who has in the past received gentle criticism for her “too sweet” stories — ends with optimism and warmth. Puppies, gardens, happy grandparents.
You get the picture.