French Braid is a quiet family saga. There are no shocking revelations or big dramatic moments in the lives of various members of the Garrett family of Baltimore. Instead, Anne Tyler chooses to focus on the smaller stuff; the incidents and ingredients that combine to shape a family.

We meet them through a series of snapshots — holidays, reunions, phone calls —over a period of about seventy years. Together they illustrate how the family grows, changes, and sometimes drifts apart almost without them realising what’s happening.

Each chapter jumps forward in time from 1959 when Robin and Mercy Garrett organise their first family holiday with teenager daughters Alice and Lily and seven-year-old David. They are not your typical family however, as Alice observes:

”The difference between this scene and the ones in the French paintings, Alice thought, was that the paintings all showed people interacting—picknickers and boating parties. But here everybody was separate. Even her father, a few yards away from her, was swimming now toward shore. A passerby would never guess the Garretts even knew each other. They looked so scattered, and so lonesome.”

Over the following decades, they move even further apart. David in particular can’t wait to get away from home — he goes off to college, doesn’t keep in touch and seldom returns home. His parents are almost the last to know when he gets married.

Mercy sticks around until all the offspring have gone their own ways and then she takes off herself. She begins by renting a room supposedly to use as a studio for her painting. But she surreptitiously moves in more and more of her clothing; spending nights away from home more and more frequently. The family maintain a pretence that she still lives with Robin but in fact she only returns to the house to do her laundry.

Life goes on. The Garrett’s lose touch; come together for occasional (and awkward) meals; annoy each other and misunderstand each other. But they keep going. Tyler’s central message is that you can’t shake off your close relatives as easily as you might imagine. There are ties that bind no matter what life throws your way; and all the irritations and frustrations an integral element of being part of a family.

Hence the title of the book. Look closely at the french braid hairstyle and you’ll see all the little strands twisting together, some tighter than others, some slipping loose. Some strands of the Garrett family might be looser than others but their lives are intertwined in ways they can’t really escape.

Well, said David, 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.

French Braid is the fifth novel I’ve read by Anne Tyler. Just as in those I’ve read previously the writing in this one is gentle and warm and the people feel real. But I never got any strong sense of the Baltimore setting nor the essence of the time in which these people lived. If I’m going to read a family saga I need it to deliver more than just a study in character. I want to know about the time in which they lived; the places where they lived and how they’re affected by changes in their society.

I strongly suspect I won’t read anything further by this author. I appreciate her skill as a writer and can see why she appeals to many readers but she doesn’t excite me. French Braid will appeal to readers who enjoy books that feel like they are peeping through the key hole and watching the family dynamics unfold. It’s just not enough to keep me interested.