My Head Is Full of Books: Review: WHISTLER by Ann Patchett (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Thursday, June 18, 2026

Review: WHISTLER by Ann Patchett (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Whistler by Ann Patchett

Book Beginning/ First Line Friday quote:

Friday56 quote:

'No one would say such a thing today, but there was a time when it did not feel like lunacy to want what the majority of the human population had. Your mother’s deal was that I had to give up Skip [Eddie’s partner] and give up being gay. I know it sounds terrible now, but she didn’t know any better. I’m the one who should have known better.'

Summary: Daphne, a 53-year-old English teacher, has a chance meeting at the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York with Eddie Triplett, her stepfather for one year when she was nine-years-old. When Daphne finally recognizes her "stalker" she burst into years. Here is the stepdad of her childhood whom she loved so much, just 40 years later. Over the ensuing months Eddie and Daphne renew their relationship and family bond, with Eddie even introducing Daphne as his daughter at party of his friends. The two clearly share something very special. As they share memories of their past they can't help but recall that Daphne saved Eddie's life after a horrifying car accident on a snowy winter night. It was just a week after that accident that Daphne's mother abruptly demanded a divorce and two hadn't seen each other since that time.

Review: By looking at the cover with a horse on it one would think that the story is perhaps a Western or at least set in West. In fact, the story of the horse, Whistler, doesn't even enter this story until the middle of the book. While Eddie and Daphne are trapped in the car on the snowy hillside after the accident Eddie, a book editor, tells Daphne the story of a woman who wrote an account of a time in her life when she was thrown off her horse and was so badly hurt that she was sure she was going to die but she whistled and the horse came back and stayed with her until she was rescued. The woman was convinced it was love which saved her. And so it is with Eddie and Daphne who return to each other after all those years and find that love [father-daughter love] that was missing.

Don and I listened to the audiobook of Whistler together on the last leg of our 13-day car trip recently. In fact, we had to finish it at home after our return as we still had four hours of listening left to go. As we turned off the audio-player as the story ended I was wiping the sad/happy tears off my face as Don stood up and remarked, "Well, that book sort of fizzled out." What? Had we listened to the same book? Don thought the story was sweet but sort of plotless. I thought it was nearly perfect as we learned the stories of two people who were clearly thrilled to have found each other again. "That's what I mean," Don grumbled. "Where was a the action?" As I stumbled around looking for words to express my thoughts on the book it hit me that indeed the book had no big trauma, or rising and then falling action. The book wasn't crammed full of awful people doing awful things. It was a gentle story about family love, relationships, and the importance of friendships.

Today before I embarked on writing this review, I read a interview in Elle Magazine with Ann Patchett which finally gave me the words I needed when I tried to explain the book to Don.

Like the story Eddie tells Daphne in their overturned car, Whistler itself is a intentionally warm-hearted tale, made all the more remarkable for the courage of these qualities. Over the years, numerous readers and interviewers have asked Patchett why she writes books that the author herself has referred to as “good, smart literary fiction that will not crush people’s souls.” In an era of buzzy sad-girl lit and weird-girl lit and ragebait lit, the PEN/Faulkner Award winner writes literary masterworks about “people who are not perfect, trying their best and showing up for each other,” she says. They’re not simple books—please, don’t call them simple—but they are precise in their purpose.

Patchett continued-

“And it is how I live my life. I can watch the news; I can read the paper; I can know that terrible things are happening everywhere. But in my life, everybody’s so nice. In the bookstore, in my house, in my neighborhood, in the grocery store, people are kind to one another. I know that part of it is that these are my eyes, and this is the way I see the world, and the more you see it, the more it reflects back. It becomes self-selecting. I’m not seeing horror in my everyday life. I’m reading it. I know it’s there. But it feels very realistic to write stories about people being kind.” (Elle Magazine)

That's it. That is precisely what I was saying [obviously badly] to Don. The reason I like Patchett books, and this one is no exception, is because the characters are not perfect, they are just trying their best and they show up for one another. And the books are full of kindness and thoughtfulness. Heaven knows we need more of that in our lives these days.

I'm guessing Don will rate the book with 4 stars, but he is not here right now to ask, and you can tell from this review I rated the book with 5 stars.