Ann Patchett's 10th novel, the exceptional Whistler, ponders the persistence of childhood trauma and of even short-lived bonds.
Daphne Fuller, 53, teaches English at a New York City girls' prep school. She's touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her husband, Jonathan, when he notices an older man following them. They're astonished to discover it's her stepfather: Eddie Triplett was (briefly) her mother's second husband when Daphne was nine years old. Daphne starts weeping, indicating a traumatic backstory--which unfolds at just the right pace.
At 76, Eddie works as a book editor. He and Daphne have a warm relationship of easy conversations. But the detritus of the past must be dealt with (for Jonathan, too, who's clearing his late mother's home), so Daphne unpacks it for her sister, Leda, who happens to be a therapist. Third-person "Interstitial" sections recount the events of January 1980. Abigail, the girls' mother, was at the hospital with Leda, whose appendix had burst. On their way home, Eddie and Daphne drove to a raspberry farm to look at the stars but veered off the road and were trapped in the car overnight. While pinned in his seat, an injured Eddie recounted for Daphne the storyline of a manuscript memoir he'd read that day of a Wyoming woman and her horse, Whistler.
Patchett (Tom Lake) is an expert on blended families and their secrets. The bittersweet tone is perfectly judged. Daphne's banter with her loved ones is a delight. The plot whisks along, its satisfying full circle returning to the Met, and incorporates a clever metanarrative twist. Whistler is quiet but surprising, witty yet heartrending. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck