Whistler

Those who know me know I’m a huge fan of Ann Patchett. So, it’s with much trepidation I say I’m disappointed with her latest novel, Whistler. The problem with a writer as good as her is that expectation is sky-high. The reality is that not every writer can hit it out of the park every time.

In Whistler, Patchett uses the somewhat unusual, autobiographic note of her own mother's multiple marriages. I can't help wonder if the indifference she brings to the novel has been honed and polished so cheerfully in her own life.
            “My problems were never ones of scarcity. I suffered from abundance, too much and too many.” (These Precious Days)
 
The Plot
 
Whistler opens with the narrator, Daphne, and her much older husband, Jonathan, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here they run into Eddie Tripplet, her mother’s second husband with whom they lived for a short time and with whom Daphne shared some kind of fateful event.
            
While their relationship was brief and Daphne was only nine, their chance encounter sparks a rekindling of their unique relationship and an avowal that they never be parted. They clearly have an unusual connection, one that Daphne’s psychologist sister, Leda, or even her mother doesn’t share.
            “Somewhere deep inside myself, in a place inaccessible to me since I was nine,” Daphne tells us, “I had missed him every day of my life.”
 
Daphne doesn’t call her mother until she’s seen Eddie several times. Her mother has a whole new family with a third husband and two sons. Daphne assumes her mother is more concerned with them than with the return of her second, ex-husband.
            “The whiff of betrayal where my mother was concerned did not trouble me.”
 
Eddie invites Daphne to accompany him to the 50th wedding anniversary of his oldest friends, Skip and Polly. It was to them Eddie ran when his marriage to Daphne’s mother ended. He had nowhere else to go and we are given to understand their friendship is particularly close. The past is held up and examined, like a snow globe, given a pretty little shake, then put back on the table.
            “For a moment I saw Skip as I remembered him – his voice, the way he stood, the way he moved his hands,” Eddie tells us. “And from these random encounters our entire lives are built.”

Throughout the novel, we are taken back to the winter night when a wrong turn on a frosty night bound Daphne and Eddie together, but in Patchett’s telling, it was the night Daphne decided the world was a kind and decent place. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, she lives that kind of way. She is married to Jonathan, steadfast and true, and has forged a sisterly relationship with his children from his previous marriage. The greatest tragedy was the loss of Eddie when her mother ended the marriage, for reasons unacknowledged, shortly after the accident. But now he’s back and they pick up where they left off.
 
My Thoughts
 
Like Patchett’s earlier novel, Tom Lake, there is a comforting, idyllic rhythm to Whislter. Every character is picture-perfect, always rising to the top of good form and impeccable manners. With their silk blouses, champagne cocktails, dinky sailboats, and Manhattan apartments featuring high-priced art, Patchett weaves together a world of taste and wealth where everyone behaves as seamless as the damask drapes of a Connecticut mansion. It is all so very nice.
 
But where is the tension, the conflict, the messy, underlying emotions that we, imperfect humans, harbour beneath the surface?
 
When their biological father leaves to pursue his true love, the sea, his absence seemingly slips off the daughters as easily as the fish he catches. When the next husband, Eddie, who we learn Daphne loves the most, is cast aside for untold sins, there is no grief, no resentment, no anger. She doesn’t even care to know why her mother turfed him, remaining incurious until he re-surfaces decades later. She may not be especially close to her mother and her new family, but the lack of any emotional undertow stemming from these earlier failed marriages is hard to believe. Everyone forgives everyone, no one bears loss or deception with anything other than grace and good manners.
 
Jonathan is the knight in shining stability, always ready to steer everyone safely to shore. Daphne’s sister, Leda, is two years younger and so is left off the hook of remembrance entirely. I had a spark of hope when their mother finally entered the picture. Initially, she was troubled by the dredging up of the past, but soon, she too fell in line, overjoyed to reconnect with Edie.
 
Even when the final note is played in the central drama that ties the novel together – the car crash – and Daphne at last tells her story fifty years later, it lands with less of a thud than fine crystal hitting the thick plush of a hotel ballroom carpet.
 
Somehow, it’s all too perfect. Where is the tension of Patchett’s earlier novels? Where is the conflict that drives characters to move forward in seemingly random ways? Here no one does anything that could get them in trouble, or that they could be troubled by. Impeccable manners make for good house guests, but not always great fictional characters.
 
As usual, there were many, many moments of extraordinary beauty and sentences that wrung every ounce of truth about the quirks of the human heart. Her writing, as always, beautifully captures a moment in time or the nuance of a shrugged shoulder, or the faint outline of a smile.

However, I couldn't quite get over the feeling that Whistler is top-shelf comfort food, the literary equivalent of pricey vanilla ice cream. Patchett has proven over and over, she can be funny and wry and crusty. It’s hard not to wish she’d brought some of that to this book.
 
Thanks for reading, my friends. I hope you're having a great summer filled with travel and adventure, or lazy afternoons with a good book. Whatever you choose, enjoy the ease of these long sun-filled days. If you find any good reads, I'd love to hear about them.

And in the meantime, happy reading!
Joni