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Summary
Summary
The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays.
"The elegance of Patchett's prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike." --Publisher's Weekly
"Any story that starts will also end." As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart.
At the center of These Precious Days is the title essay, a surprising and moving meditation on an unexpected friendship that explores "what it means to be seen, to find someone with whom you can be your best and most complete self." When Patchett chose an early galley of actor and producer Tom Hanks' short story collection to read one night before bed, she had no idea that this single choice would be life changing. It would introduce her to a remarkable woman--Tom's brilliant assistant Sooki--with whom she would form a profound bond that held monumental consequences for them both.
A literary alchemist, Patchett plumbs the depths of her experiences to create gold: engaging and moving pieces that are both self-portrait and landscape, each vibrant with emotion and rich in insight. Turning her writer's eye on her own experiences, she transforms the private into the universal, providing us all a way to look at our own worlds anew, and reminds how fleeting and enigmatic life can be.
From the enchantments of Kate DiCamillo's children's books (author of The Beatryce Prophecy) to youthful memories of Paris; the cherished life gifts given by her three fathers to the unexpected influence of Charles Schultz's Snoopy; the expansive vision of Eudora Welty to the importance of knitting, Patchett connects life and art as she illuminates what matters most. Infused with the author's grace, wit, and warmth, the pieces in These Precious Days resonate deep in the soul, leaving an indelible mark--and demonstrate why Ann Patchett is one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this eloquent collection, novelist Patchett (The Dutch House) meditates poignantly--and often with wry humor--on "what I needed, whom I loved, what I could let go, and how much energy the letting go would take." In "How to Practice," Patchett writes of her "journey of digging out" and the feeling of lightness she begins to notice as she gets rid of possessions. In the title essay, she shares the story of Sooki, Tom Hanks's publicist, whom Patchett invited into her home and offered solace and comfort as Sooki underwent pancreatic cancer treatments: "What Sooki gave me was a sense of order, a sense of God, the God of Sister Nena, the God of my childhood, a belief that I had gone into my study one night and picked up the right book from the hundred books that were there because I was meant to." Other essays cover the lessons Patchett learned on her first Thanksgiving away from home, insights from a year in which she didn't go shopping, and what she's picked up from Snoopy. The elegance of Patchett's prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles, failures, and triumphs alike. The result is a moving collection not easily forgotten. (Nov.)
Guardian Review
Towards the end of her new essay collection, Ann Patchett describes being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where a portrait of her now hangs alongside the likes of Henry James, John Dos Passos and Eudora Welty. "The picture I'd chosen to send was joyful," she writes. "I'm showing all my teeth and am completely out of step with every serious and circumspect photograph surrounding me." At first brush, These Precious Days seems a similarly incongruous addition to the sizeable stack of recently published essays by female writers. Though not devoid of joy, titles such as Lavinia Greenlaw's Some Answers Without Questions or Lucy Ellmann's Things Are Against Us are unabashed polemics; they grapple with the gritty, they rail and they fulminate. Patchett's, in contrast, is characterised by sun-dappled beneficence. At 57, her bestsellers have won prizes and plaudits, and the bookshop she co-owns in her native Nashville, Tennessee, has become a thriving cultural hub. Her marriage is harmonious (her first essay collection was titled This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage), and her expansive friendship network includes celebrities such as the soprano Renée Fleming as well as girlhood besties. She blitzes up green smoothies, does kundalini yoga, and if ever she's to be found at a bar, it'll likely be with her pal and former primary school teacher Sister Nena, an octogenarian Catholic nun (Sister Nena drinks merlot, Patchett sips a seltzer with cranberry juice). This is the world in which Patchett's intimate, elegant essays are rooted, be they about taking up knitting or giving up shopping for a year, about how Snoopy was her role model growing up (he made her want to be a writer) or why she decided not to have children. More than once, she remarks on her good fortune, though she also happens to believe in knuckling down, whether it's to a new novel she's writing or an article for a women's monthly. As she reasons: "So many possibilities can arise as a result of intelligence, education, curiosity and hard work." It's not, of course, that she doesn't find herself in tight spots; it's just that when she does, she'll unfailingly salvage something positive. Like the time, aged 19, she went backpacking around Europe with a friend, and they accepted a lift to Derry, promptly finding themselves in a war zone. That piece, The Paris Tattoo, becomes a paean to friendship. Even a health scare involving her husband, related in The Moment Nothing Changed, yields the reassuring affirmation that "For as many times as the horrible thing happens, a thousand times in every day the horrible thing passes us by." And there are always books - books to teach, to befriend, to rescue you when, for instance, you've rashly agreed to cook Thanksgiving dinner for six for the very first time. This mood abruptly changes, however, three-quarters of the way through, with the title essay. As Patchett notes of the writings she has assembled here: "Again and again, I was asking what mattered most in this precarious and precious life." The title essay snaps that precariousness sharply into focus. Topping 60 pages, it's by far the longest, and recounts how Patchett fell into a life-changing friendship with Tom Hanks. Or at least that's what she assumed it was going to be about, but Hanks turns out to be only a bit-player; it's his assistant, Sooki Raphael, a thwarted painter reticent of manner and flamboyant of wardrobe, who is its bright star. (One of her paintings, of Patchett's dog, adorns the book's jacket.) Sooki has recurrent pancreatic cancer and, just as the pandemic hits, arrives in Nashville to take part in a clinical trial. Patchett insists she stay with them, and so begins a profound deepening of their fledgling rapport. With the world turned upside down, they're soon heading off on nocturnal rambles and trying medicinal magic mushrooms together. It's radiant storytelling, both questing and vulnerable in its candour. It's also the reason this book exists. "That essay was so important to me that I wanted to build a solid shelter for it," Patchett says, and yet it's the essay that gives the shelter its heft, foregrounding darker currents that have been flowing through its pages all along. Mortality, in particular, looms suddenly larger. And then there's her frank acknowledgment that to befriend an author is to have your life written about, your psyche's innermost corners probed and exposed. Patchett of course hymned another friendship, with the late Lucy Grealy, in her 2004 memoir Truth and Beauty, and elsewhere in this very book the author is to be found plotting a piece about her dying father even as she holds his hand. It was "like holding a linen sack full of bumblebees", she recalls - a reminder, should one be needed after reading the collection's few slighter pieces, that she has serious literary chops. These Precious Days contains some masterclass-grade tips on writing, but it confronts, too, the extent to which literature and life diverge: people aren't characters; our daily hurryings and scurryings do not a plot make. And while Patchett can't start work on a novel without having figured out exactly how it will end, living well requires the opposite: "Death always thinks of us eventually. The trick is to find the joy in the interim, and make good use of the days we have left," she advises. As a rallying call, it's timely, timeless and as full-voiced as her smile is broad.
Kirkus Review
In a series of essays, the beloved novelist opens the door and invites you into her world. As she herself is aware, Patchett has a gift for friendship--never clearer than in the magical and heartbreaking title essay, which made the rounds from friend to friend by way of texted links when originally published in Harper's during the pandemic. (If you haven't read it yet, get ready for Tom Hanks, Kundalini yoga, cancer treatment, and a profound yearning to be a guest in Patchett's Nashville home.) Like This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (2013), this book contains a mixture of occasional essays and profound ones, all previously published. Patchett includes the text of a wonderful lecture on her "feral" experience in graduate school in Iowa and an introduction written for the collected stories of Eudora Welty that seems as perfect as the stories themselves. In addition to family and friendship--"Three Fathers" and "Flight Plan" are standouts in this category--several essays deal with aspects of the writing life. The author explores the process of managing one's papers and offers various angles on how one comes to the vocation of literature. "Influence," she writes, "is a combination of circumstance and luck: what we are shown and what we stumble upon in those brief years when our hearts and minds are fully open." Patchett also writes delightfully about Snoopy, the cartoon beagle and would-be novelist, first among her literary influences. Toward the end of the book, Patchett digs into Updike, Bellow, and Roth. Perhaps a few of the slighter pieces could have been left out, but even those have great lines and interesting paragraphs. A bracingly testy essay about the author's decision not to have children will give readers crucial pointers on conversational gambits to avoid should you ever get that houseguest invitation. An enviable life shared with candor, emotion, and knockout storytelling power. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Patchett, whose most recent novel is The Dutch House (2019), is an exhilarating and provocative essayist. This substantial autobiographical collection builds on This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (2013), excavating the sources of her covert ferocity and intense literary passion. Her family tales include a portrait of her three fathers; one tried to dissuade her from becoming a writer, another hoped to follow in her footsteps. Mischievously funny and nimbly incisive, Patchett celebrates her close friendship with a nun; pays tribute to an unlikely muse, Snoopy; explains why she doesn't have children, then describes how much fun she's had collaborating on children's books with best-selling illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser. Patchett elucidates all that running Parnassus Books in Nashville has done for her. In the enthralling title essay, she tells the many-faceted story of how she met Tom Hanks' assistant, artist Sooki Raphael, and how Sooki ended up staying with Patchett and her doctor-pilot husband as Sooki battled cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic. Breathtakingly candid, Patchett attains graceful velocity and tilt, her vibrant sentences serving as divining rods for piquant life lessons.
Library Journal Review
Novelist Patchett (The Dutch House) delivers beautiful prose on modern life with honesty and humor in this memoiristic essay collection. When not looking back (at her life, friends, family), Patchett offers musings on the ins and outs of book cover design and the morality of consumerism, gleaned during her pandemic year in which she cleaned, purged, and refrained from shopping. Patchett's poignant reflections are bolstered by her narration of the audiobook, which adds familiarity, depth, and personal connection. Her voice is soothing yet powerful and will inspire listeners to laugh out loud or nod in agreement as if she were telling the tale over a glass of wine at a dinner party. Fans of Patchett's novels will love the peeks at her life and writing process, and fans of essays will enjoy this collection for its diversity and cohesiveness. Be ready to sit in the car for a few extra minutes or walk around the block one more time because you won't want to pause mid-story. VERDICT Patchett's latest comes to life as an audiobook and is a perfect listen for those looking for heartwarming and down-to-earth meditations on life, love, and happiness.--Sarah Tansley