French Braid

In the past, I've really enjoyed the "ordinariness" of Anne Tyler's novels. Stories about ordinary people doing ordinary things. The characters she weaves stories about are so relatable. Sadly, her latest, French Braid, just didn't cut it for me. 

This is the story about the Garrett family. The mom, Mercy, the dad, Robin, the sisters, Alice and Lily, and younget brother, David. They come together, they drift apart, and they try to figure out the places the family has in their individual lives.

This could have been better, but I found there were too many little plot lines that didn't combine to make anything really cohesive. Or... maybe complete is the better word. It just didn't feel like a complete story.

I listened to French Braid since this is the type of novel  I love listening to. The reader was fine... except during dialog when the accents she used for each of the characters just seemed plain wrong! (There was also mention of 'her narrator said' or some reference of other to the narrator - three times- and I wondered if that was part of  the novel or just notes for the reader of the text and should not have been recorded.)

Unless you absolutely love Anne Tyler and read everything she writes, I can't really recommend this one.