The great Ann Patchett’s 10th novel, Whistler, will surprise you not just once but several times—but Patchett’s surprises are as sad as they are pleasurable. Most of Whistler’s characters, after all, are at an age when the wistful backward glance is a thing.
One of the younger characters, and the sometime narrator of the book, is Daphne Fuller. When Whistler opens she’s in her 50s, a teacher at a tony girls’ school and married to the somewhat older Jonathan. Indeed, everyone in the book is well-heeled, with their domiciles in Bronxville, New York, the now gentrified Chelsea area of Manhattan or Darien, Connecticut. We meet Daphne and Jonathan as they stroll around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and run into her long-lost stepfather, Eddie Triplett. Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie since her mother banished him decades ago. Their delight in the reunion is mutual.
Daphne and Eddie’s relationship is Patchett’s first surprise. They were very close when Daphne was a child. A reader could be forgiven for thinking that something unsavory about this relationship is going to pop up somewhere along the line. But Eddie is as close to a saint as one can find in a contemporary work of fiction. He and Daphne simply fall back into loving each other, deeply, as father and daughter.
Yet, there is shared darkness in their past. When Daphne was 9, something happened that forced the two of them into an excruciating intimacy. One snowy night, she and Eddie were in an accident after driving back home from a hospital visit. Their car flipped on its side, both were injured and they spent the night huddled beneath a blanket packed by Daphne’s biological dad. To soothe both of them, Eddie tells the story of a woman named Mary, who was also in a bad accident, and her trusty horse, Whistler. So why is the book named after this horse? Perhaps it has something to do with the adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Perhaps it’s a reminder that people in your life may cause you pain but you love them, and they love you in their own screwy way, and that’s enough. Whistler is exceptional.