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I haven’t read all of Ann Patchett’s books, but I have enjoyed all that I have read (Commonwealth, State of Wonder, Tom Lake, and Bel Canto). This newest book is just a pleasurable story. Readers get to tag along as a woman in her 50s runs into a man who was her stepfather, briefly, more than 40 years earlier. The two got along well and still have a lot of affection for each other, and now after running into each other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they reinstate a friendship, even a fresh almost-father-daughter relationship.
Daphne is 53 now; her mother was married to Eddie Triplett for just over a year when Daphne was 9. Eddie and Daphne’s mother’s marriage fell apart not long after a big event that Daphne and Eddie went through.
Now that they are reunited, they talk a lot about the past, the time they had together, and the event that made such a difference on their lives.
Eddie is in his 70s; he is still working as an editor at a major publisher, and Daphne is delighted to still talk books with him. She’s a literature teacher at a private school for girls (weirdly, this is the second book I’ve read this year about a woman who’s an English teacher at a private girls school in NYC—that was Anna Quindlen’s More Than Enough), and her older husband is retired.
In a way, Whistler didn’t feel like it had a major plot. Of course it did have a plot. But it felt just like riding along for a section of life for people in the later stages of it. They live their lives now and they look back on what they experienced together and separately that led to their lives today. And it’s all like listening in on conversations between some genuinely nice people. Reminiscing, showing love and support to each other, just pleasant.
Whistler was a couple of slices of life, presenting a few years total of time. As it went on, I thought a bit, how would it end? But I quite appreciated how Patchett navigated that: she cleverly tied up her eavesdropping on Daphne and Eddie.
Nothing too dramatic, nothing too intense or cloying or monumental, but just contentment. That’s a nice thing for a summer read.
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes a few instances of moderate profanity, fewer than 10 uses of mild language, and about 15 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content is minimal; one reference to passionate kissing, references to two men having a secret longtime relationship.
