Get to know our author of our book of the month for June, Ann Patchett. Patchett is the author of eight novels and three works of non-fiction. Her most recent novel The Dutch House was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize. In 2002 she won the Orange Prize for Fiction with Bel Canto, a prize she has also twice been shortlisted for with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012.
She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.
1. Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), Whistler.
Daphne and her husband Jonathan are spending the day at a museum in New York City when they notice an older man following them. It turns out to be Eddie Triplett, who was Daphne’s stepfather for a year when she was nine. Daphne is now 53, and Eddie is in late seventies. Though they haven’t spoken since Eddie and Daphne’s mother divorced, the two of them embark on a friendship that takes on the unanswered questions of the past and looks to the future.
2. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
The world isn’t all bad. There are still plenty of good people, and the chance to connect and to love can be life changing.
3. Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
So many! Louise Erdrich, Yiyun Li, Colson Whitehead, Elizabeth Strout, just to name a few. I own a bookshop so I’m constantly reading new books. There are so many writers doing their best work right now.
4. What advice do you give aspiring writers?
You have to love to write. You have to be willing to practice writing the way you’d practice the cello: because it’s your goal to improve. And you have to read all the time. Figure out what the writers are doing, and why your favorite books make you feel the way you do.
Whistler
When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she doesn't expect it to be Eddie – her former stepfather.
Married to her mother for a short time when Daphne was nine, she hasn't seen Eddie for many years; not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives.
Meeting again now, Daphne and Eddie feel that time has fallen away. Their earlier relationship was brief but had a profound impact on both of them. Together, they consider not only their past, but the joys of the present and their commitment to face the future together.
A moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures, Whistler paints an intimate portrait of how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.
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