This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

February 24, 2014
Patchett’s collection of essays covers a variety of subjects including love, divorce, pets, writing, death, and a whole lot more. Fans and newcomers will find this a delightful mix of reflection, observation, amusement, and sincerity. In this audio edition, Patchett proves entirely capable as narrator and maintains listener attention for the duration. Her familiarity with each piece allows for great emphasis and timing, and provides for a smooth reading and intimate performance. Her voice also perfectly captures each essay’s tone, and she knows exactly how to deliver punch lines—which makes listening all the more enjoyable than reading. A Harper hardcover.

July 8, 2013
A collection of 22 essays (including a couple of commencement addresses) previously published by accomplished novelist and memoirist Patchett (State of Wonder; What Now?; etc.) offer generous glimpses of her rural, divorced Catholic Tennessee background and winding but determined route to becoming a writer (“The Getaway Car”). Writing nonfiction, first for Seventeen and later a host of magazines as her network of editors expanded, was her bread and butter in the early days, and she has an authoritative, straightforward voice in exploring some of the milestones of her life, such as her deep love for her dog, Rose (not to be confused with the desire for a baby), learning from scratch how to love opera in order to write her bestseller Bel Canto, preparing with her ex-cop father’s guidance for the grueling L.A. Police Academy exams (“The Wall”), her startling resolve to start up a Nashville bookstore when no other bookstore was left in her hometown, and her painful but merciful segue from divorce to remarriage. The public addresses she made after the publication of Truth & Beauty, a memoir about her friendship with the deeply tortured writer Lucy Grealy, form the most telling and moving selections, especially her compelling speech (“The Right to Read”) given to the Clemson University student body in defense of academic and artistic freedom. Early on, her writing teacher Russell Banks had warned Patchett of being too “polished” and “just getting by,” urging her to take risks, and certainly many of these selections reveal a candid, evolved self-reflection.