French Braid

Mercy’s husband is the compulsive, unimaginative, workaholic Robin. The narrative follows his relative lack of development from his clueless wooing of Mercy to his one surprisingly effective family success: the surprise 50th-anniversary party. Robin, a short, insecure but attractive fellow, comes from a background of loss. His parents divorced when he was six, and he cared for his mother, who died of cancer when he was 14. His aunt Alice takes him in, imparting her rigid, pessimistic perspective to him, a vision Robin does not escape.

Robin proves to be inflexible and predictable throughout the narrative. He is oblivious to the irony of the fact that, while he preaches the necessity of earning one’s way through life, he lucked into his two most important advances: marrying a young woman who is not his match and taking over a successful business he did nothing to create. Robin’s greatest concern is not overpaying for anything. He begrudges any financial request, even David’s college tuition, which is fully paid from his father-in-law’s bequest. His narrow vision constantly creates distance within his family: He scorns Lily’s emotionalism, distrusts Alice’s precocious abilities, and openly complains that David never meets his expectations.

Robin’s name carries symbolic meaning as well. He inadvertently robs his family of joy, opportunity, and expansive vision through his arbitrary judgments. The epitome of this is the “summer of the plumber,” when he prevents newly graduated David from touring with a theater company, instead forcing him to spend the summer working as a plumber. There are numerous examples of Robin robbing family members of peace and joy: refusing to allow Morris to come to Thanksgiving supper until Mercy intervenes, forcing fearful David to walk into the lake, and trivializing Mercy’s new painting business. When Robin lays down the law, he invariably demonstrates a lack of insight into his family.

The eldest of Robin and Mercy’s three children, Alice evolves from a high-achieving, observant, dutiful daughter to a critical, judgmental elder sister, ready to cut off communication with widowed Lily because she remarries without telling anyone. Apparently emotionally detached from the family events happening about her, Alice imagines that a narrator describes her life as she moves through it like an actor playing a role. Alice appears as a person or a reference in seven of the book’s eight chapters. She marries retail-property-developer Kevin, with whom she has three widely spaced children: daughter Robin, son Eddie, and Candle. The family moves from Baltimore to the suburbs in the 1980s; then, when Kevin retires in the 2010s, they move to Florida, where he can play golf daily, even during the pandemic. All these elements represent key landmarks in the typical arc of 20th-century middle-class success.

Alice unequivocally believes she is the gatekeeper of propriety for her family. She trusts her instincts and views her family’s financial success, stability, and growth as validation of the rightness of her vision. She openly, frequently expresses harsh, blanket judgments about her family, for instance telling Candle that Mercy should never have had children. Her perspective causes her to doubt the integrity and ability of other family members. When asked if Mercy, who is a trained commissioned portrait painter, is an artist, she does not say yes. When Robin wants to throw a surprise anniversary party, Alice demands that he drop the plan.

Like others in subsequent generations, Alice received a hand-me-down name. Robin chose to name Alice after the aunt who raised him, a woman who intimidated Mercy as long as she lived. Alice largely embodies the aunt’s off-putting qualities. Tyler might also use the name Alice as a reference to Lewis Carroll’s famous literary character Alice, whose life he narrates as she, like Alice Garrett, endures ridiculous fantasies not of her making and manages to prevail.

Lily is the younger daughter of Robin and Mercy. She presents throughout the narrative as an emotionally driven person, unintentional and reacting spontaneously to life rather than planning her actions. Like her siblings, Lily appears as a reference or character in seven chapters. Her impetuousness is most notably reflected in her numerous romantic liaisons throughout the narrative: Aside from her teenage romances, she initially elopes with BJ, then has an affair with Morris, then suddenly weds the history professor.

From age 15, Lily presents as emotionally immature and totally focused on whatever boy she is dating. Her prodigious attractiveness continually draws the attention of males of varying ages. She fantasizes about her one true love—who changes from day to day—sweeping her away romantically. While this singular focus causes her father and sister to mock her, Mercy remains uncritical. Tyler gives literary hints suggesting that Lily re-embodies the romantic life Mercy had as a lovely single woman.

The name Lily may simply refer to the hardy, fragrant flower, the only name of its sort in the family. However, it likely also alludes to Edith Wharton’s infamous heroine Lily Bart from the novel The House of Mirth, whose beauty carried her through endless relationships but left her destitute and unfulfilled.

The third child and only son of Robin and Mercy, David appears as a mirthful seven-year-old in 1959, morphs into a mysterious stranger, and reappears as a 68-year-old grandfather, still struggling with family relationships. As he matures, David keeps his personal life private from the judgment of the Garretts—notably, introducing his future wife, Greta, along with her daughter, Emily, at an Easter gathering without saying they will soon marry. He and Greta have a son, Nicholas. David remains an elusive figure until the final chapter. Paradoxically, the one sure way to gather the entire family comes from announcing that David will be present at a certain time and place.

Tyler reveals several incidents from David’s life that explain how he changed from a joyful child to a reserved, nonparticipating member of the family. An observant child, David recognizes the questionable nature of the adults around him. He deduces that his father dislikes him. Although Mercy recognizes his sensitive intelligence and feels close to him, David seizes the opportunity of college attendance to relieve himself of all but casual contact with the Garretts. Ironically, David becomes a beloved teacher and a loving father. In Greta, David experiences the revelation of a mate who understands human actions and speaks with complete candor. In his late sixties, David finds himself still haunted by memories of his own childhood. Like the biblical shepherd, Tyler’s David is the last born, chosen child whose life devolves into sweet memories and unfulfilled longing.

Serena is the daughter of Lily and Morris, the youngest child in the third generation of Garretts. This is the first protagonist Tyler introduces, as she and her boyfriend, James, travel by train from Philadelphia to Baltimore. In Chapter 7, readers learn that her relationship with James ended; Serena instead marries Jeff, with whom she relocates to Asheville, North Carolina. Serena is characterized by Lily as organized and self-sufficient, like her aunt and unlike her mother. Lily recognizes that Serena’s request for help with her newborn is a rare chance at intimacy.

As the narrative develops, readers realize that the discomfort Serena feels around James’s family is a reflection of class distinctions that appear several times in the narrative: Robin realizes he is overreaching his humble background in proposing to Mercy; Mercy complains about the merchants around Deep Creek Lake catering to rich snobs; Kevin, a business mogul, teases David about his unwillingness to get rid of his aged VW Beetle. Tyler plays with Serena’s name, portraying her initially as a fretful, obsessive person who is much like Alice. When baby Peter arrives, Lily says her daughter truly becomes serene—before the baby becomes colicky, resulting in Serena becoming a panicky version of Lily.

The youngest of the protagonists is Alice’s third child, daughter Kendall. Because she cannot pronounce her name properly, instead saying “Candle,” the family universally refers to her as Candle. The exception to this is Mercy, who calls her granddaughter by her name. Candle comes to the fore in Chapter 5 when she turns 12 and begins to make definitive choices for herself. Her artistic interests place her within the orbit of Mercy, where she experiences not only an artistic awakening but a way of looking at life that is totally distinct from the vision of her mother.

Tyler uses Candle’s name to suggest several truths about the girl, her relationship with Mercy, and her family. Candle is quite bright, not only in grasping artistic perceptions but also in grasping human realities. She runs these awakening thoughts past Mercy, who helps to refine her thinking. Candle is alone in the relative artistic darkness of the Garretts, the only person who shows an inclination toward and understanding of art. When Mercy suddenly dies, Candle is the inheritor of Mercy’s brilliance, both artistically and idealistically.