“So this is how it works. This is what families do for each other - hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses. And little cruelties.”

French Braid is the twenty-fourth novel by best-selling, award-winning American author, Anne Tyler. The Garrett family, people would tell you, is fairly unremarkable. They’re living what they see as fairly unremarkable lives Baltimore. Yes, there are little quirks, minor grudges, small resentments, as in every family. But also love in its many manifestations.

To pique our initial interest, there’s Serena Drew, meeting her (newish) boyfriend’s Philadelphia parents. A chance encounter, on the journey home to Baltimore, with her cousin, draws attention to the fact that the Garretts don’t see each other very much, unlike the boyfriend’s sprawling family. To understand why, we need to go back to the late 1950s.

The Garret family on their one and only vacation, at Deep Creek Lake: Robin demonstrates his inexperience with relaxing; Mercy gets out her sketchbook and pencils and indulges in her art; seventeen-year-old Alice takes over the responsibility of feeding the family and watching over her siblings; at fifteen, Lily is quickly distracted from her sulk about leaving one boy behind by the attentions of another, older one, from whom she seems to expect a proposal; and David, to his father’s frustration, is uninterested in the water, or learning to swim.

It is always such a pleasure to read a book by Anne Tyler, and this one has you chickling all the way through, unless you are laughing out loud or saying “oh, dear” or “oh, my”, and once or twice, choking up or shedding a tear. Nothing terribly dramatic happens: readers wanting action and excitement need to look elsewhere; but Tyler’s special talent is making ordinary lives shine.

Tyler is wonderful at character description: “It always puzzled Alice, how boys would flock to Lily. Oh, she was pretty enough, in a round-faced, dimply sort of way, but that didn't explain why they grew so alert when she walked into a room. It seemed she gave off some kind of high-pitched signal that only male ears could detect. (Grown men as well as boys. Alice had noticed more than one friend's father sending Lily the same sharp arrows of awareness.)”

As always, many of her characters are a little eccentric, but their observations on life are insightful at the same time as being amusing. Serena illustrates “I can criticise my family, but you can’t”; Mercy tells her granddaughter “Sometimes people live first one life and then another life... First a family life and then later a whole other kind of life. That's what I'm doing” but she does it subtly to spare feelings from being hurt; Alice considers herself the sensible one, even if some see her as a killjoy.

Each of eight chapters is from the perspective of a different family member, giving their particular view of certain events or circumstances. If Lily’s husband sees the Garretts as narrow and unfriendly and judgemental, it’s not how they see themselves.

And Tyler’s prose is a joy: “The only sounds in the studio were the whiskery strokes of their two brushes. She'd grown used to hearing old-people music but evidently Mercy preferred to work in silence, and Candle saw her point. Silence made what she was doing seem more important, somehow - more purposeful, almost like praying.” Wonderful, as always!