This isn't my first Ann Patchett, or even my favourite, but it is so compelling that I shouted at my husband when he tried to interrupt me before I found out how one scene played out: "He hit his head!" I wailed, as though it was as plain as day that I couldn't respond to his petty request while there was a guy, a wonderful guy, lying bleeding on the basement floor. [**Spoiler alert, he comes out alright]. My point is that these are real people, and we love them like we love real people: because of and despite all that they are, their endearing gruffness, their flailing hope. That's what Ann Patchett is about: characters so real and enchanting, we miss them like friends when they're gone. And that's the reason I don't have my favourite of her novels, Bel Canto, because I keep giving it away. I've bought more than a dozen copies over the last five years, sometime two at a time, but I still don't have one, in fact, if I know you, you probably have one of them.
My sister-in-law introduced me to Ann Patchett when she gave me Bel Canto for Christmas one year, for which I'm grateful, and The Patron Saint of Liars, I bought at Book City on Bloor, which is a great store for novels especially, but loads of other stuff- travel, languages, Humanities- two floors of it.
This one I read very quickly, hungrily, on the couch in this room I am in, this room full of all these books; this little reading sanctuary, soon to shift and divide and make a small place for creating.
I'm not sure I am ready to let go of this one. Unless I really have to.
Score - +1 (2 saved, 1 released)
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