Whistler by Ann Patchett

Whistler is the tenth novel from Ann Patchett, the American writer behind Tom Lake, The Dutch House and Bel Canto. It is a quiet, close book about two people and the short time that shaped them both.

Daphne is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when she notices an older man following her through the galleries. It turns out to be Eddie, her former stepfather, married to her mother for about a year when Daphne was nine, and someone she has not seen since. A single event back then changed the direction of both their lives.

Meeting again now, they find the years fall away. The novel moves between the present and that childhood winter, and asks what it means to be truly known by one other person, even briefly, and how much that can carry.

Literary fiction for readers of Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler, and for anyone who loved Tom Lake.

'A rare phenomenon in contemporary fiction: a novel both majestic and intimate.' The Boston Globe

'Perfectly executed and quietly profound. One of her best.' Publishers Weekly