Guest feature by Jon Appleton: 'This is the Time We Have' - my decade with Ann Patchett

 

"I’ve reviewed Ann Patchett’s most recent decade of writing here on Writers Review across various posts. Maybe you’ve been reading alongside me, but if you’ve yet to read her work, perhaps I might suggest a roadmap ... "

Jon Appleton is a freelance editor and writer. He publishes his research into the history of children's literature in a free e-zine called the gab. Visit: lettersfromrobin.com/the-gab

There is a moment about 50 pages into Whistler, Ann Patchett’s new novel, her tenth, where the narrator, 53-year-old Daphne Fuller, is speaking with Jonathan, her husband of two decades, and her senior by almost as many years. Jonathan is adjusting to retirement but Daphne isn’t ready for that change. They’re talking about their lives – what’s worked for them so far, and what may work for them in the future. Or not.

Jonathan looks at Daphne and says, ‘This is the time we have.’

Later in the novel, ‘They had nothing but time’ is even more resonant.

For me, these are a-ha moments, where a decade of reading thrillingly coalesced. I’ve actually been a fan of Ann Patchett for much longer than that – since her Women’s Prize-winning novel Bel Canto – but my appreciation has deepened over the last five books, a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Patchett’s novels are about the time we have available to us and the memories we can fit within the framework of now. These aren’t ‘what if’ scenarios but ‘what can we do with what’s happened’. She once wrote of her own personal experience: ‘we were so in the middle of history that we had no way to understand what we were seeing.’*  Her novels reveal a process of restricted reclamation. That means rejecting a bunch of things that don’t fit – and people, too. The people we can make room for aren’t necessarily our nearest and dearest. That often makes things … awkward.

Jonathan was widowed when he and Daphne met. Weirdly enough, they met in a professional capacity – surgical Jonathan treated Daphne’s dad, Buddy Zabriskie, late in life. Jonathan had two daughters with his first wife. Daphne does her best to get on with her stepchildren but she knows the limitations of the relationship. She sees what they see: ‘You make me sad, was what she was saying. You who weren’t supposed to be here.’ But here she is. They’re dealing with it.

Another brilliant line gives us ‘when you start to wonder about who you’ve hurt in this life, you can easily lose your mind.’ That’s Eddie Triplett advising against retrospective angst. He’s the disrupter of the novel. More than 40 years ago, he was briefly married to Daphne’s mother, Abigail, after she’d divorced Buddy, her girls’ father. In divorcing Eddie, Abigail not only banished him from the family but the publishing house for whom they both worked. The reason was apparently simple. One night, when Daphne was nine and her younger sister was fighting for her life in hospital, Eddie took Daphne – whom he adored and was fiercely adored by in turn – for a drive, and ran the car off the road. He smashed his foot and Daphne’s face was cut – she also had to free herself from the wreckage to seek help in deep snow. Nobody died, as Abigail has always admitted. So why the fierce ejection? Could there be another reason?

After Daphne meets Eddie unexpectedly one day in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in the first pages of the novel, they have to address that reason.

She also has to finally explain that night to Leda, her brilliant sister, and so, alongside the story of Daphne and Eddie’s renewed acquaintance, we revisit the events of January 1980 and ultimately learn the story of a story Eddie told Daphne in the smashed-up car about a horse called Whistler which illustrates the many ways we fail each other and what a truly spectacular – yet almost mythic – thing it is to be capable of offering unequivocal loyalty.

Most of us will never manage that. We might be ‘decent people, smart people’, like the characters in this book, but acts of transcendence are generally elusive.

This dilemma applies to the characters in Tom Lake, Patchett’s previous novel, set during the Coronavirus lockdown where a mother reclaims her family – no mean feat, in the circumstances – and bows to their request to explain her past. It’s true, too, of Commonwealth, Patchett’s glorious seventh novel, which also concerns a moment in the past that shatters the status quo and a reciprocal moment in the present which has its own deep repercussions. But Commonwealth delves and weaves between the decades in a way that Whistler doesn’t. Whistler felt like a slighter novel as I read it – it’s certainly shorter – but the funny thing is, it’s stayed in my mind more vividly than any other Patchett novel I’ve read. Whistler makes fewer promises but to my mind it delivers most assuredly on the pledges it makes.

And actually, if you read Whistler (which I hope you do), you might agree with me that Buddy Zabriskie, though perhaps a failure as a husband and father, manages the transcendental.

While we’re speaking of fathers, I should mention that Daphne and Leda had a third – after Eddie, Abigail married again, an author, and lived with him for forty years, bearing him two sons. Daphne hasn’t ever felt attached to Lucas, but there he is, in her life, anyway, and in her story. And I should also mention that Ann Patchett herself has had three fathers. She wrote about them in an essay called Three Fathers in her essay collection, These Precious Days. She also has an older, surgical husband, and has narrated the audiobook of Whistler. Know that her non-fiction and fiction flow into each other unapologetically. It’s the time she has, right?

I’ve reviewed Ann Patchett’s most recent decade of writing here on Writers Review across various posts. Maybe you’ve been reading alongside me, but if you’ve yet to read her work, perhaps I might suggest a roadmap.

I would start with Commonwealth, and then segue into the essays in These Precious Days.

Then I’d dive into her exotic novels – where she comes as close to ‘what if’ as she dares – Bel Canto and State of Wonder.

Then I’d read The Dutch House.

And then Whistler – and hope you’ll feel as willing as I do to go where she’ll take us next.

Whistler is published by Bloomsbury.

Jon's other reviews of Ann Patchett:

These Precious Days and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Commonwealth

The Dutch House

Tom Lake

*From ‘These Precious Days’, These Precious Days by Ann Patchett, Bloomsbury, 2021

SUMMER ROUND-UP by Adèle, Celia and Linda

Adèle Geras, Celia Rees and Linda Newbery are the hosts of Writers Review. Here we each share two books that have impressed us recently and one or more titles we're planning to read next. 

Linda's choices:

In The Lost Rainforests of Britain, Guy Shrubsole has almost single-handedly raised public awareness of the temperate rainforests we have in Britain – often in damp microclimates where a deep gorge creates the right conditions of moistness and protection from wind. He’s an engaging writer and the book ranges widely, recounting expeditions with his partner or friends to remote places in Wales or the West Country, describing in detail the species found in these ecosystems, and exploring references in poetry and folklore. We justifiably criticise other countries for destroying their rainforests, but Shrubsole points out that we're largely unaware of how much of our own has been lost. His campaign has resulted in government acknowledgment of these precious habitats and a commitment to protecting and restoring them. 

I went straight on to Guy Shrubsole's more recent The Lie of the Land (clever title) - an angrier but equally informative book that looks at who owns land in Britain (the wealthiest 1% owns 50% of it), what they do with it, and how they deny access to the rest of us. You won't be surprised to hear that Guy Shrubsole was a leading figure in the successful challenge to Dartmoor landowner Alexander Darwall when he attempted to ban wild camping. Shrubsole is outraged about the (mis)management of huge areas of moorland for grouse shooting, which includes practices such as burning moorland and the illegal slaughter of birds of prey, foxes and anything classed as 'vermin' which might reduce grouse numbers - all this subsidised by taxpayers. The mass release of pheasants each year, again in the interests of the shooting minority, receives equal condemnation - in what other circumstance would the widespread release of a non-native species into the countryside be considered acceptable, at a time when bird flu is rife and we're all aware of the risks of another pandemic? As recent parliamentary debates have shown, it's down to the lobbying power of those with vested interests in shooting estates. More optimistically, Shrubsole looks at instances of communal purchase of land for the benefit of all and for nature restoration. 

As for the books I'm looking forward to, I'm treating myself to a re-reading of Judith Allnatt's touching and beautifully-written The Poet's Wife, which tells the story of poet John Clare's descent into madness from the point of view of Patty, his wife. I first read this ten or more years ago and am now delighted to see it reissued in our own imprint, Writers Review Publishing. With wonderful evocations of the Northamptonshire countryside and rural life, it begins with Patty's deep concern when her husband John, who's walked eighty miles from a lunatic asylum in Epping Forest, appears to believe that he's still married to his first love, Mary. How will Patty cope, as his behaviour becomes increasingly delusional?

I'm also tempted by Anna Hope's Albion, having been captivated by the abridged version as Radio 4's Book of the Week. With a funeral, a will, a privileged family, a big country house, complex relationships and a big surprise sprung on the gathered relatives, it has elements in common with my own novel, which Celia's kindly chosen below. Here, no spoilers, but the revelation brought by outsider Clara shocks the family out of its smugness and leaves them with a difficult dilemma to face.  

And I can't omit to mention that I'm currently in thrall to Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead. It's been sitting on my reading pile for some time but now that I've started, I can't wait to get back to it - a marvellous and moving novel whether or not you're familiar with David Copperfield, which it cleverly shadows.

Celia's choices:

I have been reading…

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. The house of the title is in Elk Park, a prosperous suburb of Pennsylvania. It is A large mansion, built in the 1920s, with a glass frontage ‘as big as storefront windows’. The use of glass in the design makes it possible to see right through it, which cannot be said of the characters who come to live there. The house is more than a setting – it is a powerful and enduring presence in the novel with a deep and lasting effect on those who inhabit it. The characters change. The house does not. It is named, not for the design, but for the Van Hoebeeks, the originally owners. It is acquired in 1946 by Cyril Conroy, a real estate developer, who buys it and moves in with his wife and two children, Danny and Maeve. He leaves the contents intact including a library of Dutch books no-one can read and large portraits of the Van Hoebeeks. Nothing about the house changes. It is as if his family have no impact on it. The house affects them, however. The mother loathes it and leaves house, husband and children. Cyril quickly installs a young widow, Andrea, with two children of her own. Danny and Maeve are pushed out, underlining the book’s fairy tale quality. Told over five generations, Pratchett continually plays on fairy tale elements and archetypes: rags to riches, absent fathers, neglectful mothers, abandoned children, wicked stepmothers, faithful retainers but it is done with such skill and delivered with such laconic, casual insouciance by narrator, Danny, that it all seems completely natural.

Our own Linda Newbery also has an iconic house, Wildings, and more importantly an iconic and beautiful garden in her novel The One True Thing. The garden is created by Bridget, a renowned gardener, who is married to Anthony who owns the house. There are two narrators, Bridget herself and her daughter, Jane. With echoes of E.M Forster’s Howard’s End and Dickens' Bleak House, the novel revolves around a death and a quirky will which leaves the future of house (and garden) in doubt. Her mother having pre-deceased her father, daughter Jane is doubly bereaved. The garden and the idyllic rural surroundings are so beautifully described that the reader begins to feel the imminent loss as acutely as Jane does. She is forced to confront not only the threat to her home, but a complex set of revelations that strike at her core beliefs about her family. The skilfully handled dual narrative gradually reveals the lies, evasions and emotional complexities of the past, leading to a resolution where past and present can be reconciled.

Having recently read The Dalai Lama’s Cat by David Michie, I'm now looking forward to The Claw of Attraction by the same author. Plucked as a tiny, dying kitten from the streets of New Delhi by His Holiness The Dalai Llama (who just happens to be passing - not coincidence {obv.} but karma), the eponymous heroine re-counts her life as HHC: His Holiness's Cat. Her day to day encounters and challenges, from the temptations offered by over generous food providers (she is, after all, the Dalai Lama’s Cat) to the sudden arrival of a dog, an abandoned Lhasa Apso, serve as lessons in timeless Buddhist wisdom, compassion and the way to true contentment. As a cat owner and therefore lover, I found The Dalai Lama’s Cat utterly charming and deceptively wise. It would work for dog lovers, too. Don’t like animals? What’s wrong with you?

Adèle's choices:

This year, I have discovered a writer I'd never heard of before and I really want to introduce her to readers of this blog. Her name is Laurie Colwin and she died in 1992 at the age of 46. She was mainly known as a short story writer and especially a food writer during her lifetime but her novels are wonderful and deserve the attention of anyone who is interested in the texture of life and relationships, food and houses, animals and children .... I'm highlighting her last novel, which was published posthumously in 1993. It's called A Big Storm Knocked it Over and it's about a woman preparing for her own wedding, while also working at a publishing house where she is the editor in charge of illustrations in adult books. Her run ins with recaltricant writers who will not listen to her excellent advice, her beautifully depicted dealings with her fiancé and her friends and the toings and froings with regard to the wedding...everything takes you straight in, and you're part of the proceedings which are described with grace, humour and attention to detail. She's comparable to Anne Tyler in her ability to absorb you into what's happening on the page, seemingly without any effort. Her writing, sentence to sentence, is elegant and considered and engaging. Here is a tiny example, picked at random: "The enormous manuscript of In the Polar Regions by Hugh Oswald-Murphy, had been placed on Jane Louise's desk three times and taken back three times by Erna Hendershot. Then, just as Jane Louise felt she had a grip on what this thing should look like, Erna would appear in a tearing rush and inform her that the author had added to it or taken something away, or that most likely it had been pushed off the spring list or that he had decided that some Eskimo artist would do little line cuts to be scattered throughout, and furthermore that his photographs -still to come- would have to be keyed in.

I really loved this book and have also read Home Cooking and More Home Cooking which are superb and also contain recipes in plenty. She's a writer to take to your heart.

If you’ve not come across the four police procedural novels of Simon Mason (The Wilkins and Wilkins books) then I urge you to find them and read them in the right order. I don’t think nearly enough readers have discovered them and they’re very good indeed.

Even fewer readers will know about the Finder novellas. These are short, spare books in which a man, who calls himself The Finder, turns up in a place (in the case of The Woman Who Laughed it’s a rather drab suburb of Sheffield) and sets about finding someone who has disappeared. In Sheffield, a young sex worker who was murdered some time ago is seen on a bus…. Then she disappears again…. The Finder begins to follow threads which lead into many strange places.

He always takes a novel with him when he travels. In this book, it’s Persuasion by Jane Austen. His reflections on the novel add to this reader’s pleasure.

My advice? Read Simon Mason!

Two books I’m looking forward to:

I’ve just downloaded Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. His name seems to suit the subject very well. It’s about fungi which have complicated networks of communication and which behave in all kinds of very fascinating ways. I love books that open up a whole new world and I am looking forward greatly to learning much more about mushrooms than the fact that they’re delicious when they’re not poisonous.

And I’m about to start on a new novel by Stephen King. It’s called Never Flinch and is a follow up to a terrific and very gory thriller starring the private detective Holly Gibney. That’s called Holly. This story involves a murderer who embarks on a plan to kill 12 innocent people, to avenge the death of a prisoner who has just been stabbed to death in gaol…. but who was falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

One thing is sure: never a dull moment in a King book, and this one looks terrific!

Happy reading and have a great summer….

ADVENT BOOKS week 2 - revisiting some of our favourites from the last 8 years

Which have you read? Tell us in the comments!

Advent Books Week 2 brings more of our favourite books and reviews. Several of our regular contributors appear here - huge thanks to them and to everyone who sends us their recommendations. There are certainly some great reads here - which have you read, and what's your view? Tell us in the comments!

 

Reviewed by Rachel Morris: "Beautifully written, moves at pace, surges with a bitter poignancy and is laced with a very particular kind of magical realism. It is also strangely defiant and often very funny ... Gardam’s dialogue is to die for – supple, expressive, often startling. She can turn the direction of a story on a sixpence. (Oh, you think quite suddenly, so that’s where this is going.) She has a transfiguring talent, can flood a scene with an ecstatic strangeness, can turn the ordinary world momentarily into something glorious."

Reviewed by Judith Allnatt: "One of Tremain’s great strengths is that she looks unflinchingly at human darkness whilst still maintaining a feeling of authorial empathy and understanding. As did Trespass, The Road Home and The Gustav Sonata, this novel moved me to tears – it is heartrending, compassionate and brilliant."

Reviewed by Jon Appleton: "You could say the book is about Danny Conroy, a man who knowingly allows himself to become the ‘project’ of two strong-willed, passionate women – first of all Maeve and later his wife Celeste. Who, if anyone, is at fault in such a scenario when things don’t work out? (That’s not much of a spoiler, I promise you) ... It’s perhaps her best book but quite likely only till the next one. She’s that kind of writer." (Tom Lake has followed ... also reviewed by Jon.)

Reviewed by Katherine Langrish: "As I reached the end I realised that the writer with whose work I’m most drawn to compare The Golden Rule is Daphne du Maurier. She too told strong stories with strong characters in strong, often Cornish settings: her books live and are loved. Du Maurier has sometimes been belittled as a Gothic novelist, though why ‘Gothic’ should be regarded as in any way derogatory I do not know: frankly what was good enough for Charlotte and Emily Bronte ought to be good enough for anyone. Richly textured, modern, contemporary, literary, The Golden Rule  treads confidently in their footsteps."

Reviewed by Cindy Jefferies: "So who is the master here? Both men inhabit these pages. Characters, whether real or imagined must dance to the writer’s tune. James was a man of the mind, and Tóibín inhabits that mind to stunning effect. No one can truly know what thoughts inhabit the corners of another’s brain, but Tóibín is impressive at conjuring what might have been there."

Reviewed by Penny Dolan: "I read with a growing sense of solutions slowly arriving and wrongs steadily being gloriously righted. All in all, Lessons in Chemistry was a delight and one that made me feel better and stronger for having read it and met such a heroine, which is surely a good thing in a story, especially these days."

Reviewed by Anne Cassidy: "Maggie O’Farrell weaves such a wonderful story from these scant facts that I ended up feeling that I definitely knew more about Shakespeare than I had at the beginning. I wanted his life to have been like this. But while O’Farrell’s plot is convincing it’s the language she uses that sets her work above the ordinary. Of the tutor’s lesson and his two unwilling students she says, “They look towards him, plants turning to the sun. He smiles at their soft, unformed faces, pale as unrisen dough in the light from the window.” A wonderful book which I have thought about over and over since reading it."