Whistler

Whistler - Patchett
5 stars

What a wonderful book. I loved it from the first page. I feel that if I were to walk into a New York City restaurant or a gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I would run into the characters who filled the pages of this book. I could walk right up and have the easy conversation of old friends. Such interesting people, with such interesting back stories.

How does Patchett do it? In just a bit over 300 pages, I know all of the important, intimate details of her characters’ lives. There’s no time for massive information dumps to slow the story. Childhood memories and past traumas flow naturally into the contemporary storyline.

For a day and a half, I was inside Daphne Fuller’s head while she related show more the story of her three fathers, her mother, sister, and her marriage to an older man. From the outside it might have appeared that her life and her relationships were disappointing and chaotic. From the inside, I heard the voice of a strong person who was content with her life. I liked her. show less

I loved this quiet novel about a woman who reconnects with her former stepfather decades after they were separated. I told a friend it was "feel good" but not saccharine, a warm hug of a story about family, memory, and stories. Patchett doesn't do big drama; she is a master of the everyday, chronicling normal people living normal lives and finding the dramatic in the nexus of human connection and emotion.

4.5 stars

High school English teacher Daphne Fuller is spending a day with her husband, newly retired hospital administrator Jonathan, when he notices a man trailing them at the Met. The man turns out to be Eddie, Daphne's second (of three) fathers, who she hasn't seen for over forty years. They reconnect, with mutual delight on both sides, and their rekindled relationship allows Daphne to dig into childhood stories she only had certain pieces of: for instance, why Eddie and her mother separated just days after Daphne and Eddie were in a car accident when Daphne was nine, while her younger sister Leda was already in the hospital for appendicitis.

The titular Whistler is the name of the horse in a story that Eddie, a book editor, told Daphne while show more they were trapped in the car together. It takes the full length of the book, teased out in flashbacks, often inspired by Leda's (now a psychologist) questions, for the full story to emerge, and other family stories as well.

Quotes

For me the past was a sinkhole. Not that it was terrible, but there was nothing for me there. (17)

"Your mother thought she could change him [Buddy], but no one changes another person's nature." (Eddie to Daphne, 58)

"It's an awful business," she said. "Loving another person." (Daphne's mom, 162)

Leda would say...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. (167)

"I don't know why people bother to guess at things. They're always wrong." (Eddie, 210)

"Every publicist should have the privilege of burying at least one of her authors." (Eddie to Daphne, 244)

"Your mother and I both have a small shard of glass in our hearts where the other is concerned....This helps pry it loose. All these years later, you can still pry something loose. There's no sense carrying shame and regret into the next life." (Eddie, 244) show less

I love every book ever written by Ann Patchett and of course, this is no exception. While I usually read them very fast, unfortunately, my Dad was in the hospital and passed away June 16. It was impossible for me to read for a few weeks. However, this was the perfect book for me to start my recovery from such sadness. Daphne Fuller and her husband, Jonathan, visit the Metropolitan Museum and notice an older gentleman following them. He turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who she hasn't seen since she was nine. It's a beautiful book about bravery, memories, small consequential moments, and the endless stream of loss that eventually comes for us all. Highly recommended.

It has been two weeks since I finished reading this gem, and I am still not sure what to say about it other than that I loved it. I am not sure how Ann Patchett does it, but her last three books have been some of the best things I've read during that time period

This bit made me laugh:

“I’ve never known anyone who reads as much as Daphne,” Jonathan said. Jonathan, who walked the line between amazed and appalled where my reading was concerned. The various stacks beside our bed at times exceeding the height of our nightstand.

But these two bits really hit home:

"...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

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winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.

What had started as a child’s quiet protest became a space that stayed between us for the rest of our lives.

I will be reading this one again, and I will recommend it to anyone who wants a quiet but powerful book about family bonds that are broken and then reforged. show less

This is a novel of comfort for our miserable times, a story to wipe away the funk and stench of Trump and (albeit temporarily) lift us back where we belong. After two depressing sagas from other favorite authors, Elizabeth Strout and Tom Perrotta, Whistler is the balm. Firstly, the stories: I relish books where adulthood and childhood are evoked, and here Patchett does it so skillfully. The PoV is that of Daphne, an English teacher at a private school for the wealthy in Manhattan. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a visit with her husband skillfully described (as beautifully rendered as the visit in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch), they are being followed by an older man who is actually Daphne's long lost stepfather (#1 of 2) Eddie. And show more thus begins Travels With Eddie, a delightful character, evicted from home and heart by Daphne's mother after a wrenching discovery and two near tragedies (the only weakness in the plot is that Daphne put Eddie so firmly into the past that she realizes that she has had nary a thought of him in almost forty years). After their meeting, the story expands to include Daphne's sister and Eddie's best friends, her late father's death, the recollection of the events that broke up the family, and especially Daphne's mother Abigail, who enters as an uncaring ice queen and emerges as friend rather than enemy. To me, the most remarkable passage is Eddie's theory about the pre-afterlife in the bardo (after Lincoln in the Bardo with a much briefer stay) and how to ease the dead and the living through the passage. It makes so much sense that, going forward, I have adapted it as my personal response to loss of loved ones. Thank you, Ann Patchett, for the respite this novel provides and for the valuable life lesson I have learned.

Quotes: "Children are righteously abstemious where any pleasures not available to them are concerned."

"Our parents...did not depend on us for their sense of identity . They had their lives and we had ours. Bless them."

"The part about retiring that no one tells you is how you get to read any book you want to read." show less

Like many authors, Ann Patchett’s novels have morphed as she’s gotten older from plot-driven to more focused on characters and relationships. For readers looking for another Bel Canto, this may be disappointing, but I am enjoying her thoughtful examinations of life. Whistler falls squarely into the second camp, without a lot of plot, but a gorgeously drawn picture of life in middle age, looking back at childhood and forward at death. Daphne Fuller’s chance encounter with Eddie, her favorite but briefest step-father, whose disappearance from her life left a large hole and many questions, forces her to revisit the past. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great stories in this book, but overall, it is an exploration of marriage, show more growing old, death, and family, and maybe because I’m a middle-aged woman myself, I loved it. show less