Ann Patchett
I have been friends with Ann Patchett for years. We have shared stages, talked books, and laughed about the state of the world. I’ve watched her hold rooms of hundreds of people completely still just by talking about reading. She is as extraordinary a speaker as she is a writer, and that is saying something.
She also owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, one of the great independent bookstores in America, which she opened when everyone told her she was out of her mind. She proved them wrong so thoroughly that she became a national voice for independent bookstores, for libraries, for literacy, and for the physical book itself, the object you hold, the pages you turn, the thing you keep on your shelf and give to someone you love.
And through all of it, first and always, she is a novelist.
Her new book, Whistler, is a must-read this summer. It is the story of Daphne Fuller, who at fifty-three unexpectedly reunites with Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather from a brief but consequential chapter of her childhood. What unfolds is an examination of memory and love, of the small moments that shape us in ways we don’t understand until much later, and of what it means to be truly known by another person. Ann writes about time the way very few writers can. Her character development is something you need to experience in her novels.
Watch our conversation below. We talked about the book, about what fiction can do that nothing else can, about why bookstores matter, about the power of libraries and literacy and the fight to keep reading central in our lives.
A few things she said stayed with me long after we stopped talking.
I naturally love her passion for libraries. Libraries are not relics. They are one of the most democratic institutions we have, places where access is not determined by what you can afford, where a kid from any background can walk in and find a world waiting.
Whistler arrives at exactly the right moment, a novel about impermanence and connection, about how the people who know us, even briefly, leave something permanent behind. In a distracted world, Ann Patchett writes books that make you want to slow down and pay attention.
That is no small thing. That is everything.
Get a signed copy of Whister here.
Image credit: susan q yin
