PHOTO
Whistler
By Ann Patchett
Bloomsbury
Reviewed by Jessie Neilson
When Daphne was a child, she and her sister had a stepfather called Eddie Triplett for the briefest amount of time.
Though his presence was fleeting and he was “scrubbed” from the marriage, the impression of him lay dormant in the sisters’ minds.
Daphne was completely enamoured of the respectful Eddie, who considered her opinions and spoke to her as an adult.
It is a fondness and a subterranean current still there as Daphne cruises into middle age.
A chance encounter will pull up a sinkhole of memories.
Daphne, 53, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with her husband Jonathan, 70, who will be off to Wisconsin in the morning to begin clearing out his late mother’s estate.
Jonathan and her both acknowledge Daphne as a magnet for older men.
Enter the dapper Eddie, at the museum with the precise purpose of viewing Henri Rousseau’s The Repast of the Lion.
One of our generation's most cherished storytellers, Ann Patchett takes our characters, their families and their emotions sailing into past decades in her latest immersive offering.
Though 45 years have gone by since familial interactions, Eddie and Daphne can remember the defining moment of their lives, together in an accident.
It was through this event that the trajectory of their lives changed.
Only those two can remember the bone-chilling cold as they huddled before rescue, intent on survival.
And in that situation was recounted the story of a horse in Wyoming, Whistler, a fable that takes on a magical dimension across their lives.
The reader, like surrounding characters, is drip fed details of the accident.
As Daphne and Eddie delve into the accident’s full dimensionality, Patchett introduces an expanding ensemble cast of past and present husbands and curious family members.
These include a “pontificating bore”, angered by the demise of his positivity franchise; a financially savvy mother, living in the “apex of her real estate dreams”, and a kind-hearted high achiever who desires only to live his life on the seas.
Readers find a sympathetic character in Jonathan, a retired hospital administrator who delights in all talk of retirement.
Knowing how to stand alongside people in their suffering, he is in his comfort zone when caring for others.
Patchett’s characters give themselves wholeheartedly over to their emotions as they reconnect with individuals from different phases of their lives.
Told through a first person perspective, interspersed with short retrospective third-person segments, the reader is very close to Daphne’s interpretations and sensations, which she is often still working out.
There are three father figures in her life and history, in addition to her aged husband.
Through the course of the novel she recounts the changing dynamics, and the place of empathy (or lack of) in these relationships.
Through Patchett’s gentle hand, there is generally kindness and genuine goodwill, though pomposity tests it at times.
The reader receives snatches of New York social scenes, and Eddie buoys the novel with his continual quips.
Daphne struggles with directions, and Jonathan knows to guide her.
This extends beyond the physical landscape to a poignant emotional one.
This is a powerful and beautiful story where they must all figure out together how altered knowledge, perceptions and friendships will fit into a tenable whole.
Jessie Neilson is a University of Otago library assistant