I really love Ann Patchett and every time she releases a new book, I find myself delighted that I am living at the same time that one of my favourite writers is writing. (I also really love her as independent bookseller but that is a conversation for another time.)
Needless to say, I pre-ordered her new book as soon as it was announced and I promptly brought my copy home when it arrived and read it. In Whistler we have Daphne, a 53-year-old high school English teacher. One day, while visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where she lives, she runs into an old man whom she doesn’t initially recognize. This is Eddie Triplett, the man who was her stepfather for hardly more than a year, when Daphne was nine-years-old.
Back then, Daphne adored Eddie but after an unexpected event one night, her mother announced they were divorcing and Daphne never say Eddie again. What happened between Daphne and Eddie had a powerful impact on them both and now that they are reunited, they are determined to reform their relationship. In doing so, Daphne will go back and re-examine that childhood incident, and much about her own life and childhood.
She would say it was because childhood never leaves us. We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock. We dry and sand and paint, but the pocket of history remains, and sooner or later someone always winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.
Somewhat similarly to Patchett’s previous novel, Tom Lake, this new story is built not so much on action and events but on relationship. It is a contemplative novel, focused on the characters. Each of these characters are deeply human – both flawed and lovely. There is no bad guy, only humans attempting to make the best of their circumstances and making choices based on what they know. And sometimes – oftentimes – they don’t know everything that’s going on.
Daphne has grown up telling herself her own version of what happened between her mother and Eddie, a version she believes to be true, but when she is reunited with Eddie, she learns layers to the story that she did not know. In many ways, this is a novel about the decisions that we cannot make as children. 9-year-old Daphne loves Eddie but has no control over whether or not he stays in her life. It is a similar though different relationship she has to her biological father. We often, as a culture, don’t explain things fully to children. Sometimes this is to protect them, sometimes it’s because people assume they won’t notice or understand anyway. They’ll grow up, they’ll forget. I think this is a shift I see now in parenting – that we are understanding better that children deserve explanations. They deserve conversation and closure and while they may not have clear memories of childhood events, they carry those moments with them into adulthood.
In the present day, Daphne is a stepmother to her husband’s two daughters, young women she met when they were already on the cusp of adulthood. We see how her own history has affected this relationship. Daphne’s husband spends much of the novel dealing with the aftermath of his mother’s death, he and his sister tasked with clearing out her house. There is a theme of death here also, grown children walking through the end-of-life with their parents.
If you’ve read Patchett’s essay collections, you’ll know that, like Daphne, she also had three fathers and she writes about this in her essay “Three Fathers”. I went back and reread that essay after finishing Whistler and while that life experience is a clear inspiration, but also entirely different.
I’ve read everything by Ann Patchett and I’ll keep reading her as long as she keeps publishing.
Karissa Reads Books 