“Old guy,” my husband said in a low voice, his lips touching my ear. "Near the exit sign.”
“Stop it.” That joke itself was old as rocks.
Jonathan raised his eyebrows. “I’m serious. He kept looking at you in the ticket line. Then he followed us through Medieval Art, and now he’s just standing there. Do you see him? He looks at you whenever you’re not looking.”
That’s the opening to Ann Patchett’s book Whistler. Jonathan is speaking to Daphne. They’re visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and when they approach the stalker, Daphne realizes it’s Eddie Triplett, her mother’s second husband. The last time she saw him was shortly after a car accident they were in
together in the dead of winter. Although only nine at the time, Daphne was the hero in that story.
Eddie is a book editor. Whistler is the name of a horse that’s in a book Eddie was editing right before the accident and a story he shares with Daphne while they’re trapped in the car, halfway down an embankment, wondering how anyone will ever find them.
This is a book about relationships, among which are the ones Daphne has with her husband, sister, mother and her mother’s three husbands. Although her mother was only married to Eddie for a year, he was the one to whom Daphne was closest. Also, as the book jacket says, “It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all.”
You may know Patchett as the talented writer of the books Bel Canto and State of Wonder. If you’re an Ann Patchett fan, then you must read Whistler.
