The major characters in Ann Patchett's wonderful new novel are good people. They are happy and well-adjusted. They don't have serious emotional problems or pressing medical concerns. There are no shameful incidents from the past or looming hardships shadowing their future. They enjoy life and live comfortably. So where is the story? Where is the kernel of disorder that's necessary to build a story?
It's hidden. And the reader doesn't find it until close to the end. But there were enough hints and clues along the way, including false suggestions, to nourish my curiosity. The first happens early: '"Old guy,' my husband said in a low voice, his lips touching my ear. 'Near the exit sign'" (1). That's the first sentence. Old guy is Eddie, a man dear to Daphne, even though they haven't seen each other in many years. He was her mother's second husband, thrown out of the house when Daphne was nine. Daphne and her husband Jonathan are wandering through the Metropolitan Museum on the day before Jonathan will leave for an extended period and Jonathan has noticed an older man who seemed to be following them and turns around to confront him.
That confrontation restarts a relationship that was severed forty years ago when Daphne's mother kicked Eddie out of their lives. There were no visiting rights after that precipitous sundering, which is what the divorce felt like to Daphne.
It's clear, in that first meeting, that theirs is a special relationship because when she learns who the dignified white haired man is, Daphne weeps. What's the source of such an explosive response? This is the question the novel begins with. And early on, Patchett creates a misdirection that guarantees my interest, suggesting that these two reconnected people might have an affair. Clearly, this is what Jonathan, Daphne's older husband, believes even though it seems unlikely, given their age difference and Eddie's original role as her father. But Jonathan seems worried, so much so that he says:
"I want to be sure you'll be here when I get back."
"Seriously? You think I'm going to run off with Eddie Triplett?"
"I don't. But you have to admit he seems to love you more than most of them do."
"Jonathan, he's my stepfather" (48).
But for Jonathan, that initial connection is meaningless and for the reader, the mere suggestion of an affair slides this new relationship into dangerous territory which Patchett wastes no time to exploit.
Here's Daphne on a call with Eddie. Jonathan is out of town and she's a free agent. Eddie has just told her about an anniversary party at the Century Club that he has to attend and Daphne asks:
"Is this an invitation?"
"It would be, if the thought of asking you didn't seem so overwhelming."
"I'd be happy to go with you."
Again, there was silence on the line, and this time I knew to wait. I stretched my legs out in front of me, tilted my face up to the sun. Jonathan had wanted a retirement party, a fancy one, and I had thrown it for him, which meant I had the perfect dress to wear to the Century Club.
"I used to think that if I ever saw you again it would be like this," Eddie said, his voice quiet.
"Like what?" I asked. I wanted to hear him say it.
"Like it was still the two of us, like we were in the car."
"I know," I said, even though I had failed to imagine what it would be like to see Eddie again. After the end of childhood, I had failed to imagine him at all.
"Do me one more favor."
"Name it."
"Don't tell your mother you're going with me"(60).
Daphne agrees and later thinks to herself that she wasn't at all bothered by not telling her mother. "That I wouldn't tell Jonathan I was going to the Century Club with Eddie was the more troubling omission" (61).
Smitten with one another, they are acting like people who will become lovers, and the mere idea of an affair smoothly and efficiently supercharges this rekindled connection and I can't help but read with heightened curiosity. And then, from that moment on, I am deftly guided through two continuous timelines, the one from the present in which Eddie and Daphne go to the Century Club and attend other social events, and the one from the past where I will discover why the car accident, the event that sits in the background of their lives, directs their moves in the present. And until that moment when all is revealed I am suspended in the marvelous anticipation that only a novel that builds characters you are eager to know more about can offer.
Patchett, Ann. Whistler. New York: Harper, 2026.
Filed under: Misleading the Reader: a tool for building momentum