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. When Daphne agrees to accompany him to his Yale roommate's 50th wedding anniversary party, Eddie introduces her proudly as his daughter. Theirs is 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 18-19, 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 by a Wyoming woman thrown from her horse, Whistler, during a storm. She lay with a broken ankle for three days being visited by the spirits of the dead before she thought of whistling for her remarkable horse, who came back to rescue her. The reassuring message resonates for them that night and into the future: there's always somewhere to turn; no one is alone in this life; even the dead--such as Daphne's father and Jonathan's first wife--live on in memory and objects.
Patchett (Tom Lake; These Precious Days; The Dutch House) is an expert on blended families and their secrets. The bittersweet tone is perfectly judged (viz. the irony of Daphne's second stepfather, Lucas, preaching positivity as a self-help author but being mired in pessimism by his 90s). 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
Shelf Talker: Ann Patchett is a master on the subject of family dysfunction, and her 10th novel, a stepdaughter-stepfather love story, is as wise as ever on secrets, traumatic memories, and storytelling.