ANN PATCHETT Whistler. Reviewed by Naomi Manuell

The new novel from the author of Tom Lake explores the impact of what we carry from childhood and the importance of books and storytelling.

In the opening scene of Ann Patchett’s new novel Whistler, Daphne Fuller and her husband are at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. An elderly man she does not recognise follows them at a distance, observing Daphne intently. Who is he? Daphne, the novel’s narrator, has previously remarked she has a knack for attracting ‘old guys’. Tall and thin, the old man reminds Daphne of a French film star but he is not. His name is Eddie Triplett and he is Daphne’s former stepfather, a man she has not seen since she was nine years old, over four decades ago.

Daphne is reduced to tears. As she puts it:

I hadn’t known there was something in me to break, but there it was and break it did. I stepped into an open crack in time and fell backwards.

And so backwards we go. As Daphne recalls the close bond she shared with Eddie, she begins to take account of the life she has built for herself. She is also a step-parent, to her husband’s two adult daughters, but her attachment to them is completely different, and somewhat bloodless. In the few short years when Eddie was married to Daphne and her sister Leda’s mother, he is completely adored, particularly by Daphne. He is a man who loves their mother and is ‘willing to take the whole package’, so to speak. Which makes the abrupt end of the marriage seem especially cruel, as Daphne explains to her husband:

‘My mother scrubbed him, at least that’s what I told myself when I was nine and I’m guessing I was right. No visits, no birthday cards, nothing. I’m sure she thought we’d get over it better that way, that we’d forget about him.’

On the other hand, a person’s childhood is never far from the surface of things. Daphne’s therapist sister expresses it like this:

‘We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock. We dry and sand and paint, but the pocket of history remains, and sooner or later someone always winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.’

 In a similar vein, Daphne herself describes the past as a ‘sinkhole’. But in Patchett’s hands, even the night Eddie and the nine-year-old Daphne survive stranded in snow following an accident is retold as something extraordinarily beautiful – filled with warmth and adventure, despite the peril. Patchett’s novels are expertly woven. She alternates between the past and present, and with such a light touch, that the effect can feel like being wrapped in a warm, fuzzy patchwork quilt of nostalgia. That’s not a criticism. Because as sweet and lovable as her characters are, neither are they saccharine nor sentimental caricatures. They are unique and believable people, and a genuine joy to spend time with as a reader. Just don’t expect anything in the way of gritty social realism. This is Ann Patchett, whose writing often centres around the emotional lives of the economically comfortable professional classes, with possible exceptions being the more diverse characters in Bel Canto and State of Wonder. Patchett’s fictional milieux are rarefied. And although Daphne’s sister Leda goes on to take a hard-headed therapist’s view of their shared past, she casts their childhood in an overall positive light.

‘We were loved, not passionately but enough, and we were largely ignored, which allowed for our healthy separation from the primary family. Necessity made us resourceful and brave. We were left to solve our own problems and so we did. The children you should worry about are the ones who are the singular light of their parents’ lives, the ones who hit thirty and are still calling their mom five times a day.’

From Patchett’s opening scene at the Met, Daphne’s family history ripples outwards, but the warm bond with the delightful Eddie remains the centre of it all.

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.

Eddie has spent his career as a book editor and Daphne has gone on to teach English to earnest private school girls who greedily devour the great books as she once did. So, although Whistler concerns itself primarily with childhood and the idea of what makes a family, it is also about books and how essential storytelling is to living a rich and fully realised life. Eddie, with his elegant witticisms and all the trappings of a cultured Manhattan sophisticate, could easily have stepped from the pages of the New Yorker. But he also becomes emblematic of a world of publishing that is now rapidly vanishing. He cares deeply about the painstaking work of writing and editing and of sending his authors’ books out into the world. The books Eddie lavishes so much care on as an editor are also his stepchildren, not strictly his own, but no less deserving of his love and devotion.

Much is made of the literary ecosystem Eddie has spent his career in. It is worth noting that Ann Patchett herself is the co-founder and owner of Parnassus Books, an independent bookshop in Nashville, Tennessee. One imagines the author may have conceived the shop as a bulwark against the onward march of ecommerce and big corporate retailers, a glimmer of hope in an ever-darkening post-literate world. An affection for old school publishing is evident in Whistler. When Daphne’s mother meets Eddie again, she voices her regret at having left her career in publishing too soon. But Eddie tells her she got out at the right time, before publishing was ruined:

‘Amazon, Germans, the end of antitrust laws, printing in China, take your pick. You left in the golden age. Keep those happy memories.’

The ‘Whistler’ of the title refers to a story within the story about a girl and a horse, which explains the cover. This survival story – an account of love, death and the supernatural – mirrors Daphne’s own recollections of how, as a plucky nine year old, she saved her stepfather’s life after their accident. As two would-be authors themselves, Daphne and Eddie come to regard storytelling as a form of immortality, even as a means of cheating death. Whistler is a sweet, gentle story of reconnection and love and Patchett’s prose is as masterful as ever.

Ann Patchett Whistler Bloomsbury 2026 PB 304pp $34.99

Naomi Manuell is an award-winning Melbourne writer.

You can buy Whistler from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW. You can also buy it from Booktopia. We receive a small commission if you purchase through these links.

You can also check if it is available from Newtown Library.

Tags: Ann | Patchett, book editors, books, families, publishing, reading, sisters, step-parents, Tom Lake, US fiction