The author’s latest, Whistler (Harper, June), centers on Daphne, a middle-aged English teacher; her reunion with Eddie, her former stepfather; and the long shadow cast by a car accident when she was nine. Like all of Patchett’s best work, it’s a novel of enormous generosity. At PLA, Patchett will join children’s author Kate DiCamillo for a lunch with attendees on April 2.
What was the initial spark for Whistler, your 10th novel?
I was working on another book for more than a year. Then I had the idea for this book, and I immediately started and wrote it.
Were the two books related?
Only in one way: the book that I dumped was about Mary Carter, the woman who owns the horse. I did an awful lot of research about horses, falling off a horse, and how long you could survive in a field. And it just wasn’t working. So I threw that book away and wrote this completely different story.
Like your character Daphne, you had three fathers, as detailed in your essay collection, These Precious Days. Did you plan to give her those circumstances?
I didn’t know anything from the start, which is not the way I normally work. I knew that Eddie would have to be Daphne’s stepfather. But then Abigail, Daphne’s mother, would get married again. So, then it would be three fathers. I thought, oh, I can’t do that, because people will think it’s me. But I decided, I don’t care what people think. It’s right for the book.
Did Daphne get more of your life than characters in your other novels?
The character that got the most of my life was Franny in Commonwealth. I just wasn’t careful in this book in the way that I am normally careful to make sure there is a big wall between life and my fiction.
Eddie tells young Daphne about Whistler while they’re trapped in a snowstorm, then worries that the story of a horseback-riding accident is “too scary.” Why was it the right story for the moment?
It was the right story for the novel. As somebody who doesn’t have children, I don’t really understand what age can do what and what age can take what story or what information. It made perfect sense to me that Eddie, who loves Daphne so much but has never been in these circumstances before, would get that wrong.
Has your work at Parnassus Books changed the way you write?
Very weirdly, I am more productive owning this bookstore, which eats up so much of my time. Maybe I’ve become a better time manager. But I have such a sense of what’s out there and what’s missing and what I long to give people: good, smart literary fiction that will not crush their souls.
