French Braid: The Sunday Times bestseller from the Booker Prize shortlisted author of A Spool of Blue Thread

Description

A stand-out new family novel from the critically acclaimed, Booker-prize shortlisted author of A Spool of Blue Thread *ONE OF THE TIMES BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2022* The glorious Sunday Times bestseller from one of our greatest storytellers. French Braid follows one family's joys and heartbreaks, mistakes and secrets, from the 1950s right up to today. When Mercy Garrett moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. All she wants is space and silence. No clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. But it turns out family life is impossible to escape - particularly when it's in your past. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations 'Gorgeous, charming, profound, and written with such lightness of touch' MARIAN KEYES 'A perfect work of fiction' MEG MASON 'She is and always will be my favourite author' LIANE MORIARTY 'Exquisitely crafted, tender, hilarious, devastatingly precise, I loved this powerful meditation on the small and often unvoiced moments that can make up a life' RACHEL JOYCE 'Anne Tyler really is the best... Her sheer brilliance makes it all seems so effortless' GRAHAM NORTON 'A faultless novel, effortlessly profound. I read it in two sittings, totally immersed' VICTORIA HISLOP

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her bestselling novels include Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Ladder of Years, Back When We Were Grown-ups, Digging to America, A Spool of Blue Thread, Clock Dance and Redhead by the Side of the Road. In 1989 she won the Pulitzer Prize; in 1994 she was nominated by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby as 'the greatest novelist writing in English'; and in 2012 she received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. In 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the Booker Prize; and in 2020 Redhead by the Side of the Road was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Such a perfect work of fiction, you want to turn it over like a tapestry to see how it is done; how Tyler can sew gentle humour into a truly heart-wrenching story, and twist all of life's hurts into a family saga that is ultimately life-affirming, and a brisk and thrilling read. We readers are so lucky a writer like Tyler exists -- MEG MASON Tyler's sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate -- HANYA YANIGIHARA She is and always will be my favourite author -- LIANE MORIARTY Anne Tyler really is the best . . . her sheer brilliance makes it all seem so effortless -- GRAHAM NORTON One of my favourite writers -- ALI SMITH Fans of Anne Tyler will be delighted by French Braid, a family saga that takes us from the 1950s to the present * Must-Read Books 2022, Daily Mail * A new Anne Tyler novel is an island of certainty in a tumultuous world * Reasons To Be Cheerful in 2022, Daily Telegraph *