A new Ann Patchett novel is always such a joy, and this one did not disappoint. Whistler is written from the point of view of Daphne, a teacher at a private girls’ school in her fifties. She admits to being popular with older men, so it’s not surprising that Jonathan, her husband, is a seventy-year-old retiree. They’re at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when Jonathan notices an elderly man following them. It turns out to be Eddie, the stepfather Daphne hasn’t seen since she was nine.
The two reconnect – Eddie was always the nicest stepfather you could imagine and the pair had been close in the two years they’d known each other. But it all came to an end when Daphne’s younger sister, Leda (their mother had gone through a Greek mythology phase), developed appendicitis and Eddie was left to collect Daphne from school while their mother stayed at the hospital. A car accident on a snowy night ended with Eddie being sent packing and ever since Daphne felt it was her fault.
The story dips back into the past to recreate that night and also tells the story that Eddie was hoping to develop into a book – he’s an editor at a major New York publishing house. The story has a similarity to this one, and involves a horse named Whistler – in case you were wondering where the title came from. We learn about the girls’ father Buddy, who left his family when the girls were small, beckoned back to a life at sea; the resilience and mental toughness of their mother; and of her third marriage to the author of books about positivity, who has become an oddly bitter old man.
A lot of the book is Eddie’s story too. He’s a wonderful character, a genuinely nice guy who makes a strange pact with Daphne’s mother, which hampers his emotional life enormously. But out of it Daphne gets a fabulous dad and friend. Books are his life too, and this he passes on to Daphne. So this is a great novel for book lovers and writers too.
Eddie Triplett had been cut from an entirely different piece of cloth, and it was the same piece of cloth that Daphne came from, or that’s what she told herself. He read constantly, and not just finished books. He read books that were loose piles of paper and marked them up to make them better. “A work in progress,” he liked to say, as if the novel needed some help getting on its feet. At her insistent begging, he once marked up a theme paper she had written for English class, correcting it the way a teacher would so that she could write it out a second time, fixing her mistakes before handing it in. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this,” Eddie said, circling her misspellings, her word repetitions.
“Other parents to it,” she said. And they did. Not her mother but other people’s mothers. Never the fathers as far as she knew.
Segments of the accident as it is recounted are placed strategically through the book and the story builds to a satisfying ending. There’s a thread of grief that runs through it for the years of wasted time, and guilt too over how it all happened. I found this an enjoyable read with good company, but less compelling, less gritty than some of Patchett’s earlier books, in particular The Dutch House, Commonwealth or State of Wonder. The characters so well-heeled and comfortable, even if the past does shake them up a bit – but not for long.
It’s interesting to delve back into a family and see the difference between what a child sees compared to what really happened. I’m sure that the book echoes real life in this way for many of us. So while this is a quieter story than earlier Patchetts, there’s more than meets the eye. With that in mind, Whistler is a four-star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 