Whistler

Jul 15

About the book

Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: Harper

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print or ebook) | Libro.fm (audio)

My review

It’s tough out there, y’all. Sometimes we just need to read a compelling story by a masterful writer that makes us feel good in the end. I didn’t know that’s what I was going to get out of Whistler, but I did, and it was wonderful.

Despite the horse on the cover and the title being the name of the horse, Whistler is not about a horse. It’s about a middle-aged woman named Daphne who bumps into a man named Eddie, who was her stepfather for a short time when she was a kid until a significant car accident involving the two of them ended his marriage to her mother. (To close the loop for you, there’s a story about Whistler the horse that plays a prominent role in their relationship.) Daphne spends the rest of the book getting to know Eddie again and learning more about why that car accident was the catalyst for such an abrupt change.

In that way, it is really a book about familial love, grief, memory, and second chances, plus how the past shapes us but we still never stop changing, even later in our lives. As children, we tend to process things one-dimensionally through our limited worldview and inability to fully consider the complete personhood of others (especially our parents). As adults, we often have the chance to understand those events more fully — what happens when we do?

Ann Patchett has an incredible talent for writing prose that’s elegant but also emotional. She takes stories about complex characters with realistic lives and turns them into a warm hug (especially in her last few books). There are very few authors who can really do this; Elizabeth Strout also comes to mind.

Whistler reads quickly but never too urgently. It’s structured in alternating timelines between the present day and that fateful car accident, but never in a cliffhanger DUN DUN DUNNNN kind of way. It doesn’t build to a big reveal at the end; instead, she gives us information as we become curious about it. In that way it never feels frustrating or manipulative to be pulled backward or forward in time. In contrast, it actually feels completely natural. (This, too, is a very impressive feat of storytelling.)

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that Ann Patchett does an absolutely wonderful job narrating the audiobook — and I read a LOT of audiobooks! I was skeptical because authors are not usually voice actors, and with fiction, it tends to show. But I should have known that her warm demeanor and dictational clarity would translate perfectly. Her prose is also the kind that is easy to follow and engage with on audio. I highly recommend!