Welcome Spring! We had a beautiful weather day for our April meeting where we discussed French Braid, by Anne Tyler. Coming up next in May is The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich. We hope you are enjoying the good reads~ and the warmer weather! 🌞
As a reminder, we will plan to vote for this next year's reading list at the conclusion of our May 9th meeting. If you can't make the meeting, you are welcome to vote online with a link Susan has created here: https://tinyurl.com/2y2n7vns. You can also e-mail your votes into Amanda or Susan, and/or call into the library with your choices. Let us know if you have any questions~ happy voting!
To the book!
The Garretts take their first and last family
vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some
ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting
the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time
keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady
Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest,
David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons
none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the
Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably
through each generation.
French Braid
is a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of
tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and
cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from
those who love us, and how close--yet how unknowable--every family is to
itself.
With the exception of maybe just one, the overall vibe of this book was that it was just ok~ our members didn't love it, but didn't hate it either. We thought it was a quick and easy read that didn't leave us feeling much of anything by the end. Words like "mundane", "boring", and "tedious" were offered... it felt like taking a long glance in the window of any ordinary families home. It was added that this book didn't have much of a plot to speak of, but rather had a heavy focus on character development, with the characters all being believable. A few members confessed to reading the book a few months ago and struggling to remember anything about this read.
All that aside, we had a good, long discussion about what Anne Tyler may want people to take away from this book. We hypothesized about possible motives, feelings, and actions of the different characters. We grumbled about all the loose ends, and then considered how real life has ample loose ends. And no plot. We wondered if there could be a hidden deeper meaning within the story that wasn't readily apparent. We talked about if every book has to be a 5-star read, or if these easy, fast, noncommittal books have their place. We marveled at how much we had to say about a book we all generally thought was just ok.
Do you have anything to add to the discussion? Give us your thoughts in the comments below!
Did you enjoy French Braid? Fans of the book also enjoyed, Lucy By the Sea, by Elizabeth Strout, This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub, and Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. All of these titles are available within the Viking system~ reserve your copy today!
At the conclusion of every book club discussion we ask three questions and track the average answers:
"NO"
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"YES"
Rate the book 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest rating:
3 stars
