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Title: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
Author: Ann Patchett
Genre: Essay collection
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Collection of Patchett's essays on writing, her life, driving across Montana in a Winnebago, and more.
Thoughts: I first fell in love with Patchett's writing with the novel Bel Canto. I wasn't introduced to her nonfiction until I read Truth & Beauty earlier this year. (It helps to have read it--a lot of these essays are autobiographical and touch on events chronicled there.) She writes with a poignancy and vulnerability and fearlessness that I find sucks me in and won't let me go.
But that doesn't mean that everything in this collection is deep and gut-wrenching. Stories about her dog, awkward vacations, and helping nuns move also betray a wry good humor and a willingness to be self-deprecating when called upon. Even the light hearted pieces skim along the surface of what it is that drives us. Our intro to the dog includes a meet-cute; a latter essay reveals that she was not entirely forthcoming and has more ambivalence about her dog-acquiring methods than first displayed. The vacation teeters on the edge of a break-up. The nun's faith in God's plan does not prevent trepidation at learning to balance a checkbook (and thus, take care of herself in a way she has not had to before).
Patchett has a way of making the very specific universal, helping explain our inner natures through our minute decisions. It's one of the things we turn to the best of fiction for; here, she reveals an equal gift for it in nonfiction.
Author: Ann Patchett
Genre: Essay collection
Thingummies: 4
Synopsis: Collection of Patchett's essays on writing, her life, driving across Montana in a Winnebago, and more.
Thoughts: I first fell in love with Patchett's writing with the novel Bel Canto. I wasn't introduced to her nonfiction until I read Truth & Beauty earlier this year. (It helps to have read it--a lot of these essays are autobiographical and touch on events chronicled there.) She writes with a poignancy and vulnerability and fearlessness that I find sucks me in and won't let me go.
But that doesn't mean that everything in this collection is deep and gut-wrenching. Stories about her dog, awkward vacations, and helping nuns move also betray a wry good humor and a willingness to be self-deprecating when called upon. Even the light hearted pieces skim along the surface of what it is that drives us. Our intro to the dog includes a meet-cute; a latter essay reveals that she was not entirely forthcoming and has more ambivalence about her dog-acquiring methods than first displayed. The vacation teeters on the edge of a break-up. The nun's faith in God's plan does not prevent trepidation at learning to balance a checkbook (and thus, take care of herself in a way she has not had to before).
Patchett has a way of making the very specific universal, helping explain our inner natures through our minute decisions. It's one of the things we turn to the best of fiction for; here, she reveals an equal gift for it in nonfiction.
