These Precious Days
It was a short video clip* of Ann Patchett ’celebrating’ the fact that two of her novels had been banned in Orange County, Florida that made me aware of her. So I went to a local book shop to look for her books and found this collection of essays. They’re charming. If that sounds like faint praise, it shouldn’t. And isn’t. She writes such calm, graceful, fluid prose. It wraps itself around you and pulls you in to whatever it is she’s writing about. It might be her three fathers (via her mother’s marriages); good and bad book covers; long lost photos and early poems; a friendship with a dying woman; the value of essays. Or my favourite: her thoughts on not having children, not wanting children, and wondering why so many interviewers seem to think she can’t properly exist without them. (Nobody, she once pointed out, ever asks Jonathan Franzen this question.) Whatever the subject, you just want to read more. This is a lovely book. * Link to the clip: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=...
