Ann Patchett and the stories that rescue us

In “Whistler,” a chance encounter sends a woman back to the defining chapter of her childhood.

By Ron Charles

Ann Patchett’s new novel, Whistler, is that loveliest of summer gifts, a story of reconciliation, of old affections renewed, of a family’s circumference enlarged. Fans of the author’s previous work will open these pages like an old shoebox of family photos. Newcomers — how I envy them those first moments — will discover a writer of gentle wit and quiet grace.

Whistler, Patchett’s 10th novel, may be her most essayistic and in that sense her most confident. This is a reflection on fatherhood largely unruffled by the exigencies of plot. You’ll wait in vain for the terror of Bel Canto or the thrills of State of Wonder. Yes, it contains a moment of real peril, but the sting of fear has been mellowed over time like onions caramelized by heat.

Whistler begins in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but unlike Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch, the explosion that takes place is merely a chance encounter that blows away four decades of separation. One day while strolling through Modern and Contemporary Paintings, Daphne and her husband become aware that an older gentleman is following her. She’s not particularly concerned. “If you don’t want to engage with someone, don’t engage,” she thinks, but her husband insists on introducing himself.

After a brief conversation, he brings the older man over and announces, “This is your stepfather.”

Daphne knows he must be wrong, but then the gentleman says his name — Eddie — and her eyes are opened. Read the full review at Ron Charles’s Substack.