“Your mother and I both have a small shard of glass in our hearts where the other is concerned: her disappointment, my shame, her regret and my regret.”
“Because in the book, I don’t die. In the book, we’re sitting on this bench, talking about a book about the two of us, and then the story stops with us waiting for Jonathan and your mother to come back.”
Somehow, Whistler ( Harper 2026) is my first Ann Patchett. I’m not sure why I’ve avoided her, particularly Tom Lake, but I did. So, my first Patchett is likely going to be in my top five reads of the year. It doesn’t change my Booker predictions (despite two Booker shortlisted books and one Booker winner being mentioned in the novel), but this was a heart hug of a beautiful novel.
Daphne Fuller and her husband (mostly her husband) notice an elderly man following them while they are at the Met. When the man is questioned by her husband, he is revealed to be Eddie Triplett, the man who was married to her mother for less than two years when Daphne was nine. Daphne had loved him, and she had always blamed herself for him leaving. At the age of 53, she reconnects with him and they explore what happened so many years ago, revisiting the past and the stories that held them afloat – including that of a horse named Whistler.
It’s a tender story told in a familiar way that thumps with heart and the distant sound of hooves.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 