the patron saint of liars by ann patchett

What is marriage? Happiness? A story? What, for that matter, is “This” - the process Patchett is engaged in at this very moment, this telling and revealing and hiding and concealing?

And while that remarkable title essay, “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” is indeed about her happy second marriage, it holds up every word in its title for close interrogation. This may sound normal enough for someone born in the 1960s, but then you learn that her father was a respected Los Angeles police officer who helped arrest, among others, Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan that Patchett’s mother, despite the divorce and a subsequent remarriage, raised her daughters as Roman Catholics and had them educated by nuns that Patchett herself worked as a teacher, a waitress and a freelance writer for women’s magazines before becoming a successful novelist and, finally, a bookstore owner that she married a fellow Catholic in her mid-20s, was divorced less than two years later and only recently remarried “after 11 years of back-and-forth discussion.” At this point, the subdued irony of the book’s title begins to have a special flavor. In fact, this carefully arranged collection of essays (most of them published previously in various magazines) allows us to learn more about Patchett than we know about many of our friends.īorn in Los Angeles, Patchett moved to Tennessee at the age of 6, when her parents divorced. We are given similarly detailed insights into the story surrounding “Truth and Beauty,” her memoir about her close friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy, though in this case much of the fascinating part comes after the book’s publication. Her account of the circumstances behind the writing of her first novel, “The Patron Saint of Liars,” is so compellingly personal you feel you’re looking over her shoulder as she sits down to write.

I’ve read only one of Patchett’s previous books, her much-praised novel “Bel Canto,” but this nonfiction collection makes me curious about the rest. I had been so engaged by Ann Patchett’s multifaceted story, so lured in by her confiding voice, that I forgot I was on the job.

But when I got to the end of the book, I realized I hadn’t taken a single note. Yes, I was assigned to review it, and, yes, I assembled all my usual reviewer’s equipment (note cards, pen, critical faculties) before sitting down to read. I hope it will not sound disrespectful if I say that I read this book for fun.

The patron saint of liars by ann patchett