French braid (Random House)

The major new novel from the beloved prize-winning author -- a brilliantly perceptive, painfully true and funny journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s right up to the changed world of todayWhen the kids are grown and Mercy Garrett gradually moves herself out of the family home, everyone determines not to notice. Over at her studio, she wants space and silence. She won't allow any family clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond. Yet it is a clutter of untidy moments that forms the Garretts' family life over the decades, whether that's giving a child a ride or a painstaking Easter lunch, a fateful train journey or an unexpected homecoming. And it all begins in 1959, with a family 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.'If Anne Tyler isn't the best writer in the world, who is?' BBC RADIO 4 WOMAN'S HOUR'She is and always will be my favourite author' LIANE MORIARTY'Tyler writes with an apparent effortlessness which conceals great art' HELEN DUNMORE 'My favourite author... She writes such absorbing, wise, tender books, devastatingly acute about human nature... She never fails' JACQUELINE WILSON 'Tyler's sentences are wholly hers, instantly recognisable and impossible to duplicate' HANYA YANIGIHARA 'Anne Tyler really is the best... Her sheer brilliance makes it all seem so effortless' GRAHAM NORTON 'One of my favourite writers' ALI SMITH