Literary fiction

Review: Whistler

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Cover image of "Whistler" by Ann Patchett

Whistler

Whistler, Ann Patchett. HarperCollins (ISBN: 9780063511637) 2026.

Summary: When Daphne Fuller runs into the stepfather she hadn’t seen for forty years, they reconnect, understanding the bond between them.

It was supposed to be a day for Daphne and Jonathan Fuller to enjoy being together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then Jonathan notices that an older man is following them. And they are unable to elude him. Finally, they talk to him to discover that the man is Eddie Triplett, Daphne’s stepfather. It has been over 40 years since she last saw him. She’d more or less put the brief time her stepfather was in her life away in a box. He’s now in his seventies but still working as an editor at a major publishing house.

And yet we discover that there is a deep bond, forged in a traumatic accident. Between meetings in the present, the story flashes back to the accident and the events that unfolded that winter night. While Daphne’s sister Leda was in the hospital for appendicitis, Eddie picked up Daphne after school on a cold wintry evening. Before taking her home in their big Chevy station wagon, he wanted to take her to out to a raspberry farm at the top of a hill. However, he missed a turn and they slid off the road into the woods. Eddie injured his left ankle, trapped under the emergency brake, as well as his left shoulder. Daphne, in her seat belt, only had a bad facial cut.

During their time in the car, we learn the story of Whistler, a horse in a story Eddie never published. The author never submitted it for publication. The horse rescues its owner and the story was so powerful that Eddie had a rendering of Whistler in his office. We come to see there is more than one Whistler in the story.

Jonathan, a hospital administrator Daphne met while caring for her dying father, Buddy Zabriskie, is away in Wisconsin, cleaning out his parents home. He’s also reconnecting with the past. In fact, reconnecting and understanding is an important part of this book. When she and Eddie go to meet Skip and Polly Hotalling, she learns the real reason her mother divorced Eddie. It wasn’t because of the accident. She comes to a reckoning with all three men who had been “fathers.” And she comes to understand more of her mother, with whom she hadn’t been close.

Most of all, as Daphne revisits the events of forty years ago, she recognizes qualities that have been part of who she is–with Eddie, with Jonathan, with the girls she teaches. She also learns lessons about life’s impermanence from Eddie and how accepting that can yield happiness.

Acceptance of life’s givenness seems to be a quality of Patchett’s most recent books. There is a maturity here that I can’t help but thinks reflects a maturity in Patchett. As always, Patchett writes with exquisite beauty. Added to this are the deepened insights of coming to terms with one’s past, one’s people, and one’s self.

Review: Persuasion

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Cover image of "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

Persuasion

Persuasion, Jane Austen. Penguin Classics (ISBN: 9780141439686) 2003, first published 1817.

Summary: Will Anne Elliot retrieve the missed opportunity of a broken engagement with Captain Wentworth eight years later?

The plotline of this story was set up in its first pages. Anne Elliot, youngest daughter of Baronet Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall becomes engaged to an ambitious young naval officer, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But those around her do not consider him worthy of a Baronet’s daughter by either measures of class or wealth, of which he has little. Although her father and oldest sister Elizabeth disapprove, Lady Russell is most persuasive. She is a distant relative who has become Anne’s closest confidant since the death of her mother. Because of her disapproval, Anne breaks off the engagement, against the inclinations of her heart.

Eight years pass. In the intervening period, Sir Walter, with no Lady Elliot to check him overspends his means. To pay off debts and reduce expenses, the family decides to rent Kellynch Hall and move to Bath. Bath offers a social circle enticing to both Lord Elliot and Elizabeth. Anne prefers her old neighborhood but has no choice. Then she learns that the new tenants are Admiral Croft and his wife Sophia. Sophia is Captain Wentworth’s sister!

Anne is able to stay nearby with her sister Mary’s family which include her husband Charles and sisters Henrietta and Louisa. Then Captain Wentworth returns for a visit with her sister. In the intervening years, he has made a fortune and is ready to marry and settle down. He’s formally courteous, and in some instances seems attentive. But Anne, the girl in her full bloom of beauty at nineteen is somewhat faded and worn at twenty-seven. And Wentworth seems attracted to Louisa, who returns his interest.

During a visit to the seaside resort of Lyme Regis, Louisa suffers severe injuries while “daring” the Captain to catch her. Anne offers to stay but both Mary and the Captain stay instead, although Anne would have been the better nurse. Anne rejoins her family in Bath, and expects to hear both news of Louisa’s recovery and her engagement to Wentworth.

Meanwhile an Elliot cousin, heir to Kellynch Hall reconciles with Sir Walter after an estrangement of many years. He sets his sights on Anne, who does not trust him, despite the efforts of other family members to persuade her this is a good match. Then startling news come. Louisa is engaged, but to another naval officer. And Wentworth is in Bath, but remains aloof, seeing Elliot’s attentions.

I found myself thinking throughout this novel that if Anne and Wentworth could have fifteen minutes alone, they could sort things out! But then what would happen to the romantic and dramatic tension?

There is the great irony in Sir Walter’s social pretensions and the reality of his straitened circumstances, requiring him to rent Kellynch Hall to (ugh!) a naval officer, and brother-in-law of Captain Wentworth.

Finally, there are a number of “persuasions” in the story–of Lady Russell, of Cousin Elliot with Sir Walter, of Mrs. Clay, who has insinuated herself into the family circle, and of the family with Cousin Elliot. All of these go against the wisdom of the heart and we hope that the Anne of twenty-seven will be wiser than the girl of nineteen.

This was Austen’s last novel, published posthumously. I like the process of maturing in Anne but thought other characters like Elizabeth or even Lady Russell lacked substance. The interest of Anne and Wentworth seemed obvious enough to this reader that the plotting just drew out the obvious while seeming to leave things up in the air. I didn’t think it Austen at her best.

Review: Theo of Golden

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Cover image of "Theo of Golden" by Allen Levi

Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden, Allen Levi. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781668236512) 2025.

Summary: An old man moves to Golden, sees portraits in a coffee shop and in powerful personal encounters gives them to their owners.

I think I’m a latecomer to the Theo of Golden party. For months everyone who has read this book, including friends with discriminating book judgment, have raved about this book. Truthfully, I feared buying the book and being disappointed. Instead, I was won over from his first portrait bestowal to Minnette. For those who haven’t yet read, the story in brief is this:

An old man, Theo moves from New York City to the southern town of Golden to look after his properties. On visiting the local coffee shop, he notices the pencil-drawn portraits of local residents. He conceives the plan to give them to their proper owners. He purchases them, works with Mrs. Gidley, the administrator for James Ponder, whose vacant apartment he has rented, to contact each with a personal note. In it he invites them to meet him at a particular bench by a fountain known as the Fedder..

Along the way, he becomes deeper friends with some of the residents. James Ponder becomes not only advisor but friend and confidant. Others include Tony, a Vietnam vet bookstore owner, a little girl, Lamisha, with extensive injuries from a car crash, an eccentric, homeless cyclist, Ellen and a gifted young cellist, Simone. Then there is his deepening friendship with the artist of the portraits, Asher Glissen.

I won’t go further than that in the plot except to note we know little of Theo’s background except that he grew up in Portugal, lost a daughter, and obviously is a man of great means. What we do learn, and what makes this book so compelling is the humble and beautiful character of Theo.

What most seems to stand out is how fully present he is to each person he meets. Instead of talking about himself, he listens to and draws out stories, making people feel safe with him. Theo even wins the trust of Ellen, the eccentric homeless woman, with whom he eventually goes on a bike adventure, something no one has ever done. He notices and names. He studies each portrait and then speaks of what he sees in that person from what they’ve said and what he sees. Then he gently invites them to live into what he has named.

He loved beauty and joy. Whether it was evening reveries by the Oxbow River, delight in a street musician, or enjoyment of a rare bottle of port with his bookstore friend on that man’s birthday, he had a great capacity to take joy in beauty. We learn that giving away portraits in Golden has been the happiest time of his life.

Yet he was a man who knew deep sadness in a romance broken off, and the death of his daughter. One of the most profound passages, in which he names a gift of the artist, Asher Glissen is about sadness. He has just observed that he sees sadness in every portrait of Glissen’s.

“It is a very high compliment, young man. A very high compliment indeed. Perhaps I am mistaken but, at some point, if we are wise, we must all confront our sadness, our brokenness, our disappointment. I am quite certain that your portraits help some people in a very tender and courteous way, to ask themselves, maybe for the first time, ‘Who is that person? What do I know to be true, really true, about that face?…Asher, we are masters at masking our sadness, but deep down inside, if we are honest, we know that there is an unsatisfied longing deep inside all of us. Your portraits invite people to be alone and quiet and truthful with themselves, to admit the longing and to discover the goodness in their sadness. Maybe?”

Asher is also one who notices and names through his portraits.

Finally, Theo is a man of deep faith. While Tony, the bookstore owner scoffs at the idea, Theo quietly hopes in heaven. This vision of heaven is evident in the Christmas gifts he gives. He invites Simone, the cellist, to play for the angels. He calls the little girl, Lamisha, a daughter of the King. And he writes to Asher,

“It is an imponderable thought that the Giver of Faces, the face of heaven itself, the face for which every heart yearns, became a wee babe, misty-eyed and helpless, looking Himself for the tender face of his mother on the night of the angels.”

I understand why this book has touched the hearts of many. We are confronted with heartlessness in our media every day. Levi’s book speaks to a yearning in us that believes “another life is possible” as my friends in the Bruderhof describe it. Theo embodies that life. His presence paints a picture of the Christ-transformed life. He incarnates the deep humility, gentleness, generosity, playfulness, and compassion of the Lord of heaven. And quietly, Theo of Golden invites us into that same kind of life.

Review: I Cheerfully Refuse

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Cover image of "I Cheerfully Refuse" by Leif Enger

I Cheerfully Refuse

I Cheerfully Refuse, Leif Enger. Grove Press (ISBN: 9780802165190) 2025.

Summary: In a dystopian America, Rainy and Lark carve out a joyful life until tragedy sends Rainy on a Lake Superior odyssey.

I don’t typically select books this way. Looking at a table of new works at my local store, the cover art of this book caught my eye. The description sounded like a modern day odyssey. And the author was from Minnesota. Having had a good experience with another Minnesota author, William Kent Krueger, I thought I’d give Leif Enger a try. I’m so glad I did, though amid the goodness, truth and beauty of the story was heartbreak and terrible darkness.

The setting is Lake Superior in a not-too-distant future America. Societal order, the economy, and the climate have collapsed. The country is controlled by sixteen multi-billionaire “astronauts.” Some semblance of societal order is maintained by pharmaceuticals developed aboard “ships of horror.” Children are rated on a “feral scale” and medicated. And if it all becomes intolerable, a little slip of paper with a drug called “Willow” will help you end it all. And some are having “Willow” parties. Libraries have closed and books are becoming an increasingly scarce commodity.

Rainy and Lark have somehow carved out a joyful life together. He’s a big bear of a man who paints houses, plays bass guitar, often with a local band, but sometimes just to comfort his friends. Lark is a former librarian with a big heart and a passion for books. She runs a second-hand bookstore in a bakery, scouring estate sales for book collections. Lark taught Rainy to sail, going to a place called “The Slates,” where they had a somewhat mystical encounter they believed was with Molly Thorn, thought to be dead. Consequently, they buy and re-hab an old sailboat.

Lark, in her open-heartedness brings home a fugitive, Kellen. He has run away from one of the pharmaceutical ships. Perhaps the fact that he had in his possession an unpublished work of Molly Thorn’s, I Cheerfully Refuse, sufficiently seals the deal and he stays with the couple. But tragedy strikes the night of Lark’s birthday. Kellen has disappeared. After a futile hunt, he returns home to find his home destroyed, and Lark brutally murdered. A stranger, an older gentleman, who he later learns is Werryck, ran the ship Kellen had fled, and has been around the town, and through the book, has traced Kellen to their house. That’s why Kellen has gone.

Not only that, Werryck is after Rainy. Whatever they tore up the house looking for is still missing. So, Rainy takes to his boat. The only destination he can think of is “The Slates,” hoping perhaps he will find Lark there. Along the way, he is joined by Sol, a young girl he rescues from an abuser, buying her with his bass. Together they endure Superior’s terrible storms, scrape together an existence, outsmart a corrupt bridge operator, and search for an old relative who once cared for her.

The novel asks the question what kind of people will we become and what kind of communities will we form when the societal order fails? Along the way, amid the corruption, Rainy and Sol will find outposts of goodness. But what kind of person will Rainy, who has lived by goodness, supporting his friends, become? He faces his greatest test when he becomes Werryck’s captive.

Rainy’s sailing journey on Lake Superior strikes me as a modern-day Odyssey. Will he, in the end, find home? And how will the journey have changed him? Also, not unlike Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Enger confronts us with a very possible dystopia, asking us what kind of people we would be in such times. He does all this in a compellingly beautiful story.

Review: Early Autumn

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Cover image of "Early Autumn" by Louis Bromfield

Early Autumn

Early Autumn, Louis Bromfield. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504073394) 2022, first published in 1926.

Summary: Olivia Pentland, in a loveless marriage in a rich old family, faces choices as the early autumn approaches when she turns 40.

I’ve long had an interest in Ohio-born author Louis Bromfield. Bromfield was a best-selling novelist in the 1920’s, winning the Pulitzer Prize for this work. In the 1938, he returned from Paris to his home town of Mansfield, Ohio, purchasing a worn out piece of farmland that he renamed Malabar Farm, building an elegant home that was the site of the wedding of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I’ve toured the home, camped with Boy Scouts on the farm, and read two books on his early experiments with sustainable agriculture, Pleasant Valley and Malabar Farm. But until now, I’ve not read any of his fiction, which I suspect is largely neglected these days.

The story is set in the fictional town of Durham, Massachusetts at the estate of the Pentlands, a rich but declining old New England family. The central character is Olivia Pentland. Though Scotch-Irish and of a lower class, she had a dark beauty and her own wealth. As a young girl, a marriage to Anson Pentland appeared promising. Twenty years on, she found herself in a loveless marriage. Anson was in love with writing his family’s history but no longer slept with Olivia, Their daughter, Sybil was turning 18, their son and heir, John, was sickly, and the shadow of death hangs over this narrative.

The one person Olivia shares the deepest bond with is Anson’s father, John. He is still in many ways the family head at the Pentlands, even as Olivia makes the household work. His wife is still living, but confined to a wing of the home, having descended into insanity and cared for by Miss Egan, who is secretly having an affair with Higgins, their groom. While visiting his wife every day, John Pentland also has had a close companionship with Mrs. Soames.

During the summer before Olivia is to turn forty, John’s niece, Sabine Callendar and her daughter Therese have come for a visit, staying at a cottage owned by Michael O’Hara, an upstart Irish politician who has built a new estate nearby. Sabine represents the family scandal, having lived a libertine life in France. She is resented by Aunt Cassie, the family Puritan determined to maintain the rectitude and reputation of the Pentlands. But Sabine’s presence is the catalyst for Olivia to realize the confining character of her own life at Pentlands. The loveless marriage, the strictures of what’s appropriate, and the secrets lurking behind the pious appearances. Not only that, Olivia fears her daughter will inherit all this.

Not only that, Sabine brings Olivia together with Michael O’Hara. O’Hara had been riding horses with Sybil. When Olivia joins to discover his intentions, she learns his interest is in her, not the daughter. Through the summer, romance kindles between them. Meanwhile, she finds a bundle of letters revealing a family secret that will wreck the pretensions of the Pentlands. That includes Anson’s book. Then a young man arrives from France who had met Sybil during a visit and is seeking her hand. He’s a man of character and the two really love each other. But this won’t go down well with the Pentlands.

Things come to a head as autumn and Olivia’s birthday approaches. What will she do about O’Hara? About her daughter? About the messed up household of the Pentlands, which somehow has ended depending upon her? Among all those trying to influence and define her, she is confronted with what she wants in her life at this important juncture, and what kind of person she will be.

I liked the way Bromfield builds up to the crisis we all see is coming. In addition, in developing the character of Olivia, we come to appreciate her strength, quiet beauty, and deep sadness. The novel harks back to a different time, a blend (or clash?) of Regency, Victorian, and Continental sensibilities in a New England setting. Written a century after Jane Austen’s novels, I found it had more in common with these than more recent works. Perhaps that is why people aren’t reading Bromfield these days. But this is Bromfield at his best, and well worth the read.

My reviews of Bromfield’s non-fiction:

Pleasant Valley: https://bobonbooks.com/2015/10/08/review-pleasant-valley/

Malabar Farm: https://bobonbooks.com/2015/10/26/review-malabar-farm/

Review: It’s A Battlefield

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Cover image of "It's a Battlefield" by Graham Greene

It’s A Battlefield

It’s A Battlefield, Graham Greene. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504053976) 2018, first published 1934.

Summary: The private “battles” of those connected with Jim Drover, a bus driver convicted of murder for killing a policeman.

Jim Drover was convicted of the knife murder of a policeman about to bludgeon his wife, Milly, during a demonstration. He was sentenced to die by hanging. The action in this story involves the people who know Drover and their efforts to secure a reprieve. As they do so, we see figures involved in private battles. The title refers to a battle in the Crimean War where a fog isolated soldiers from the larger battle, so they ended up fighting individually, without a sense of the whole but just trying to survive.

The Home Secretary has asked the nameless Assistant Commissioner to give him a report of what effect an execution will have on Communist demonstrations. Jim’s brother Conrad, the “brains” to Jim’s “braun” tries to find a way to secure his release. He solicits the efforts of the Communist party with only desultory results. Conrad urges Milly to persuade the policeman’s widow to sign a release, which she does under pressure. However, no one holds out much hope for the petition. Milly’s sister Kay goes to bed with Mr. Surrogate, a widower who is an influential Communist economist to solicit his support, but also to satisfy her own urges. Both Surrogate and the Assistant Commissioner try to persuade Caroline Bury, a society influencer to use her influence. All of this is to no avail.

The reports the Assistant Commissioner receives suggest that the response to Drover’s impending execution will be indifferent. There is the question of doing justice, since Drover was defending his wife. But he hides behind his duty to enforce the law, and that the determinations of justice lay with others.

Meanwhile, as Conrad Drover and Milly recognize the apparent futility of their efforts, they end up in bed, a release but unsatisfying. This was not the “look after Milly” he promised his brother…or was it? Struggling with guilt and ineffectuality, he buys a gun and begins stalking the Assistant Commissioner.

Greene portrays a group of people with no great purpose or vision, who are just trying to get through life, and survive the battle that is life. Conrad, in his desperate plan at least strives for something more–if nothing else to do “something” for his brother. Even the usually conscientious Assistant Commissioner sits on the report. In the end, Jim Drover, who defended his wife, looks the most heroic. But over all seems to hang the bleak curtain of a faithless and indifferent modernism.