Books: “French Braid” by Anne Tyler

If you’ve ever traveled the New York-Washington DC corridor, you might be tempted to skip over Baltimore.  But don’t. The art museum’s a dream, Camden Yards is a great-looking baseball stadium, and the blue crabs should be smashed with a hammer and consumed with gusto.

As we recall such Baltimore icons, let us also praise famous writers—like Anne Tyler. A Minnesotan by birth, and a Baltimorean since the 1960s, she has written a total of 23 novels. These include “The Accidental Tourist” (which was made into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis), and “Breathing Lessons” which won a Pulitzer Prize, also in 1988. And now she has written “French Braid.”

What’s the new book about? Well, like “Seinfeld,” it’s about everything and nothing. The protagonists, the Garretts, are a middle-class nuclear family from the Baltimore area. In the late 1950s, Dad runs a hardware store, Mom takes up painting. The two daughters are teens who are as different as night and day. The little brother plays with toy figurines which he calls “veterinarians.”

The story follows the younger family members as they suffer the pangs of adolescent love, go off to college, and have children of their own. Dad and Mom grow old and quietly grow apart, as Mom discovers “there’s a time for family life and then there’s a time for a something else life.” She moves into a studio of her own to paint. Dad, who is as old-school as they come, is dumbfounded.

While the family members occasionally reunite for important occasions, they really don’t like one another. But as an in-law points out, they are like a “French braid,” a hairstyle worn by little girls—tightly braided strands of hair that when loosened are still full of knots and tangles. As a family member then observes, “Well, that’s how families work, too. You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.”

This is a wonderful book that’s blessedly free of murders, clichés, and snark. And while it’s not Tyler’s most exciting novel, who cares? Tyler has been praised for her elevation of everyday life into art by no less than John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates, as well as her fastidious character development. “I do make a point of writing down every imaginable facet of my characters before I begin a book, trying to get to know them so I can figure out how they'll react in any situation,” she has said. “My reason for writing now is to live lives other than my own, and I do that by burrowing deeper and deeper…till I reach the center of those lives." Boom.

Those of you who love Anne Tyler like I do will devour “French Braid” faster than a bucket of crabs washed down with some Natty Bo’s. As a Baltimorean waitress might might ask you, “So whatcha waiting for, hon?”