Book: Whistler
Author: Ann Patchet
Published by: Bloomsbury
Price: Rs 699
Whistler is, at its heart, a father-daughter story. The bond between Daphne Fuller and Eddie Triplett, her mother’s second husband, is at the core of this tender and moving novel.
Fifty-three-year-old Daphne is visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her husband, Jonathan, when she meets Eddie after forty-four years. Daphne’s mother, Abigail, had divorced Eddie after he was involved in an accident with Daphne; neither she nor her sister, Leda, quite knew why. Despite her close bond with Eddie in the short time he was married to her mother, Daphne hasn’t thought of him since. Seeing him again, Daphne realises what he still means to her and how their “hearts were forever stitched together”. From here, Ann Patchett weaves the story of a father and daughter estranged by circumstances who rediscover one another and, in doing so, become family, once again.
Whistler moves between the present and the past as the narrative keeps circling the car accident that deepened the bond between them. Through these constant dips into the past in which the accident and the story of a horse named ‘Whistler’ become anchoring incidents, Patchett meditates on the nature of love and memory. Both can endure, even if they have been locked in a box for years. For decades, Daphne hasn’t talked to anyone about Eddie or the car crash in which Eddie broke his ankle while she suffered multiple stitches. It’s no coincidence that her first detailed retelling of that fateful night and her role in saving both their lives happens across a table where her entire family is present more than four decades later.
As Daphne looks back at her experiences as a child through the eyes of an adult, she does it with the insight and the wisdom that come only with age. Added to it is the knowledge of the exact reason why Abigail decided to divorce Eddie so suddenly. The revelation of this secret, which is at the centre of the narrative and is key to Eddie’s character, doesn’t turn into a moment of melodrama in Patchett’s deft hands. Instead, it comes across as a quiet clicking of things into place, helping Daphne make sense of the past and all that followed.
In Daphne’s rediscovery of Eddie, Patchett — whose mother also married three times — seems to emphasise that families come in many shapes and sizes. Families can be inherited, yes. But they can also be found. And sometimes, the love we receive from these found families can help us become a more expansive version of ourselves, open to a greater understanding by and acceptance of the family we have inherited. This happens in the case of Daphne who begins to look more compassionately at her mother and the choices she made. She is even able to forge a moment of proximity with Lucas, her mother’s third husband.
However, Patchett doesn’t turn away from the truths one must face in life, including our own mortality as well as that of our loved ones. She includes moments of fleeting joy, kindness and tenderness in the novel because these moments have the strength to sustain us through dark times. Something else that sustains us through such times is art and writing. Tellingly, Eddie and Daphne meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or that the photograph of ‘Whistler’ keeps Eddie and, later, Daphne, company.
Patchett’s writing is tender and hopeful, and she makes the characters feel alive with all their complexities. She handles everything with grace and allows her characters room for mistakes and misunderstandings, giving them second chances.
Both Eddie, an editor, and Daphne, a schoolteacher, had once wanted to be writers. Towards the end, Eddie asks Daphne to write a novel that stops before he dies, advising her to bring it to an end at the exact moment that Patchett’s Whistler does. Writing is an act of resistance, Patchett seems to imply. Loss in life might be inevitable, but writing has the power to preserve: be they fathers, horses, hopes, memories, or relationships.