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We sense that Patchett has long been martyred to others’ idiocy. The literature students at Clemson University haven’t even read The Great Gatsby, and hulking men at the LA Police Academy trials are ‘close to tears’ over their written test. Apart from the houseguest who gets sassily sledgehammered for her assumption that ‘everyone has at least one great novel inside them’, these poor souls are generally taken under Patchett’s wing. At one point, as things get heavy, the author breaks off with an ‘I’m sorry, am I comparing myself to the Buddha?’ Yes.
There is something about Patchett’s formation of a sentence — something so knowing, so totally assured in its wry self-deprecation — that can become grating. There are only so many boundless blessings and kind-hearted counsels that can be contained within the folds of a book jacket. To quote Patchett herself, ‘Sometimes it is the wonderful life, the life of abundant friends and extended family and true love, that makes you want to run screaming for the hills.’
What’s more, it takes wilful blindness to write about how no one appreciates the transcendent connection between you and your dog, and assume your readers will be any different. Yet it’s hard not to feel a pang at the memory of said dog’s final moments on the veterinary table. That’s the Patchett effect. You’re won over, in spite of yourself.
As a series of collected essays, this is not exactly a memoir. The form allows you to dip in and out, to navigate away from complacency and find more fertile climes. The essay on the tyrannical vegetation of Tennessee offers exactly this, while a description of a lovers’ argument in a Paris restaurant, interweaving a Michelin-starred menu with a word-game spun out of control, is a gleeful exposure of human brittleness. Here we see Patchett’s style at its best, her ability to encapsulate a situation with economical intensity.
This is a book that will annoy as many people as will find its advice invaluable; it’s the small islands of stylistic genius that carry the reader through.
Because you read about book review
Also by Matilda Bathurst
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