MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Ann Patchett has a new book. Those are such delicious words to say out loud, I'm going to say them again. Ann Patchett has a new book, a novel - her 10th, out today. It's titled "Whistler," and it opens inside the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, when a couple wandering the galleries, enjoying the art, notice a stranger following them. Old man. He follows through medieval art, past drawings and prints, up marble stairs to modern and contemporary. They finally stop, speak to him, and when Daphne, the woman, realizes who it is, it completely breaks her. Ann Patchett, hi.
ANN PATCHETT: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Hi. Who's the old man?
PATCHETT: Eddie Triplett. And Eddie Triplett had been Daphne Fuller's stepfather for a little more than a year when she was 9. She hasn't seen Eddie since she was 9, and now she's 53.
KELLY: Yeah. It occurred to me as I was reading it, you know, a lot of books, suspense novels, open with a mystery, like someone's been killed. Who done it? And you spend the book trying to figure it out. This book sets up - it's a quieter mystery, a mystery of the heart. And we see it in that opening scene. These two people who you can tell love each other so much, but as you just said, they haven't seen each other in decades, and neither of them has even tried to find the other.
PATCHETT: Right. And you have to remember that if Daphne - present day - is 53, when she was 9, we didn't know how to find people when we were 9. I guess 9-year-olds now can just go on the computer and track whoever they want. But when I was a kid, if someone disappeared from my life, they were gone. Not only were they gone, it never occurred to me that I had the power to find them. And so it makes sense to me that they lost one another. And then at the time in Daphne's life where she might have said, wait, I could look him up, I think it was too far gone.
KELLY: So far in the past. So I want to fill in a little bit of what their story is. Daphne and her once stepfather were in a bad car wreck together. Like...
PATCHETT: Yes.
KELLY: ...A really bad one. She was 9.
PATCHETT: Yes.
KELLY: His ankle is completely crushed and mangled, and they're in the middle of nowhere. So it falls to her...
PATCHETT: Right.
KELLY: ...This little girl. She - a child - is going to be the one who has to go out into the snow and get somebody to rescue them. She's scared 'cause she's been told, as all nice little children are, don't talk to strangers. And it's Eddie, her stepfather, who says, no, no, everyone's nice. You're going to find people who are nice and they're going to want to help you.
PATCHETT: Yeah.
KELLY: And you write that it takes decades for grown-up Daphne to realize the power of those words over her life, that it caused her to believe in human decency. Like, she believed Eddie when he said, people are going to be nice. They're going to want to help you. And that by believing him, she found it to be true. I thought that was beautiful.
PATCHETT: And I also really believe that. I mean, Eddie says, yes, there are bad people in the world, but they are so outnumbered by the good people. The people who will want to help you are so hugely present out there once you leave this car. And he said, If I thought that something terrible was going to happen to you, I would say let's just stay in the car together and take our chances, which, by the way, would have been zero. But it does shape Daphne's whole life, and I think that it shaped my whole life because I was told the same thing when I was a child.
KELLY: By who? Who made the case for human decency to you?
PATCHETT: I think the nuns. I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and they were not proponents of stranger danger. It was people are kind, and it's your responsibility to be kind in return. People will want to help you. It is your responsibility to help people. And I would say my parents really backed that up. My father was a police officer. So certainly when I got older, my father was somebody who would say, lock the door. I was never somebody who locked the door. But they did not instill fear in me as a child.
KELLY: Huh. This book speaks to some of the joys of getting older. I mean, many of the conversations between Eddie and Daphne, they obviously were not going to have when she was 9. There's one scene where the two of them are going back and forth, not arguing, but they're not not arguing over who should pay for the brunch. And Daphne keeps offering and keeps offering and keeps offering. And finally, Eddie says, Daphne. And you write...
(Reading) And so I stopped. That's one of the things about age. If you are lucky, you learn when to stop.
I feel like...
PATCHETT: Yeah.
KELLY: ...I'm still learning. How about you?
PATCHETT: I'm getting better. But I'm so aware of it because that is exactly where I live. Especially with good deeds, I am a Jack Russell with a towel. You know, I'm just not going to let it go. I want to help. I want to help. I want to do it. I want to do it. And to get to a point where you realize that the kind thing is not to do it. The kind thing is to listen to what the other person is saying. Yeah, I don't want you to do this.
KELLY: Yeah.
PATCHETT: OK. I'm going to respect what you're saying and I'm going to shut up. That has been my lifetime's journey.
KELLY: (Laughter) You and me both. All right, let me bring us toward a close by asking this. Would you disagree with the notion that your fiction has gotten quieter over the years? And I mean that in a lovely way. I don't mean lesser. But I mean, if you go back to "Bel Canto," arguably your breakout novel...
PATCHETT: Yeah.
KELLY: ...You had guerrillas taking hostages. You had a...
PATCHETT: Right.
KELLY: ...Shootout with - involving a glamorous opera star. This is all unfolding at a fancy party at a villa in South America, etc. This new book, as we've just made clear, features no hostages, no shootouts. It's a middle-aged woman trying to make peace with her parents.
PATCHETT: Gosh, imagine that (laughter). Yes, it is quieter. And you know how it feels to me is that I'm not trying as hard. I am taking what is nearby and telling the story that is in my heart. And that was true of "Bel Canto," but I didn't trust myself as much, and I felt like I needed to dress it up...
KELLY: Glam it up, yeah.
PATCHETT: ...In order to make it exciting. Even though, you know, it's a book about strangers coming together and forming connections, I needed to crank up the stakes. And I don't feel that need so much anymore. I just feel like I need to really pay attention to the story and the people. And I think it doesn't have to be pyrotechnics. It just - it has to be true.
KELLY: Ann Patchett. Her beautiful new novel is titled "Whistler." Thank you, Ann.
PATCHETT: Thank you, Mary Louise.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAY ERLEWINE AND WOODY GOSS SONG, "PALM OF MY HAND") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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