Ann Patchett’s Whistler review: Fact, fiction, and Three Fathers

Ann Patchett posing with her father and two step-fathers. (Source: These Precious Days/Cris)

But Whistler refuses to take more from Ann’s life, and almost stubbornly follows a different direction. Eddie Triplett, the stepfather in between, with the magical effect he had left behind on our protagonist Daphne Zabriskie, remains only in fiction. After slipping away from her life when she was only nine, he reappears just as magically 44 years later in a New York museum, following her around stair after stair, making her husband quip that older men couldn’t get enough of her. He should know, Jonathan the husband is 17 years older than Daphne.

But when Daphne recognises Eddie with such overwhelming emotion, you know something huge from the past is about to unfurl, and you get repeatedly impatient to get to the bottom of that story as it is told to you in parts, because the present keeps intervening, and you have to take into account the other characters in their lives – the mother, the sister, Ed’s friends and what caused the separation with this kind, kind man.

Ann and Daphne

Despite my ‘detection’ of the three father story, I don’t picture Daphne with Ann’s face. After an adventurous trip to Ann Patchett’s lovely book shop called Parnassus in Nashville, US, and dropping her a childish scribbling (for she was not there) last year, I decided I’d know her anywhere, fiction or not.

Daphne isn’t her. She is 53, and like Ann, had wanted to be a writer when she was nine and Eddie, a books editor, was in her life. But she sways in the direction of teaching and sticks to it and does a really good job of it. Daphne is your helplessly good-natured character, who is the first to lend you a hand, seems entirely content with what she has, and is charmingly open to differing views. Her bond with her younger sister Leda is so organic that you can pull a chair and imagine conversing with them as they talk of past and present, and without a telling gesture or word, manage to emote love.

Ann’s writing somehow always seems to me to resonate with Elizabeth Strout’s, with their calm, kind characters and unhurried ways of life. Daphne Zabriskie is no Lucy Barton, but the two of them could be great friends. But while you don’t expect a shocking twist or turn in Strout’s books, you know Ann can gently place big surprises on your lap when you least expect it, like it’s the most natural thing. By the time you turn the last page you are heaving major sighs, not quite in the lines of ‘wow, didn’t see that coming’, but overwhelmed by the simplicity of it.

An unforgettable yarn

Whistler tells the story of a child and her step-father and one tough night they face together but it is brought out so beautifully, you cannot doubt the lasting impact each of them had on the other’s life forever. It is not just them, you stop to admire the characters they are tied to – Leda bringing up the unappreciated courage of her sister as a child, Jonathan taking the smallest hint from a tired Daphne to not leave her alone. Ann really is a master of spinning unforgettable characters. After a while you may not remember the exact reasons for keeping them in your memory, but you know they have been dear.

Tom Lake, Ann’s novel before this, had a similar effect on me, with the three daughters of the protagonist bearing the real life names of three sisters from another essay of Ann’s. But it is the mother, Laura Nelson, that stays behind in your head – the seemingly predictable woman who left theatre and arts behind for family, and yet is full of surprises she keeps to herself. You have to wonder if Ann likes to gently roll out the full picture and outwit the reader who thinks they had it all figured out from page one, or if she simply lets her characters take their time to be fully themselves on the pages of a book.

I don’t know if Ann read my note scribbled on a yellow pad borrowed from her shop, or saw the sorry stick figure at the bottom. But sometimes, like what authors do through their books, even one-way communication can be satisfying, knowing you have left your words out there, and someone may pick it up to read. Ann, and her Daphne, and her Eddie – all who aspired to write – should know that.