From a Google Image Search – The Boston Globe

I wasn’t going to read Whistler by Ann Patchett because it looked like a book about a horse, which it was, in a way, but it is really a book about love. It’s about all kinds of love, love that works and love that doesn’t, love with depth, love by habit, and superficial attachments that pass for love. Daphne Zabriskie Fuller had three fathers (and one husband). Buddy Zabriskie was her birth father who married her mother Abigail when they were both very young after she found out she was pregnant.

Buddy left his heart in a lobster boat in Boston, and he soon left the marriage. Although Daphne and her sister Leda spent time with him, he was not a father to them. He wasn’t cruel, just preoccupied. Eddie Triplet was Abigail’s second husband. Daphne and Leda were quite young. Daphne was around 8 or 9, and her sister was younger than that. Daphne and Eddie had an instant rapport. She felt close to him, he was reliable, and he supported both her character and her intelligence.

Abigail met Eddie when they both worked at Houghton Mifflin in Boston. She marketed books, he edited books. Daphne wanted to be a writer. But, of course, she was only nine. When Daphne was nine her sister Leda had to have her appendix removed and was in the hospital. Their mother stayed with her and sent Eddie and Daphne home.

On the way home from the hospital Eddie decided to take the road to the raspberry farm so they could star gaze without city light interfering. The car slid off the road and ended up on its side on a steep incline. Eddie’s foot was trapped under a pedal, possibly broken, too painful to move. Daphne was lying on his side to comfort herself and keep them both warm. Buddy had made them store some emergency road supplies so there was also a space blanket.

Eddie entertained Daphne with a story a writer had sent him about the heroic actions of her horse, Whistler. What Daphne must do echoes the heroic actions of the horse, a compelling literary duplication. It turns out that Eddie is gay, which has nothing to do with how Daphne feels about him, but because her mom blames Eddie for the accident, and because he comes with baggage, she banishes him from their lives.

Abigail remarries again, but the girls never see Lucas as their stepfather. Daphne meets her husband in a hospital where Buddy is dying of cancer. Leda marries a Korean man named Steven Ha and writes a psychology column in the New York Times.

I listened to this book on Audible because they keep rewarding me with free books. Ann Patchett reads her own book. At first, I found her reading too slow with every word carrying the same weight, but soon she and I were swept away with the story and her style was just fine.

And then one day Jonathan and Daphne are standing in Modern Art in the Met in front of a sculptural bronze of a horse with a shadow horse behind, two horses who spend their days looking out on Central Park, when she is reunited after over forty years with Eddie Triplet. Does she still feel the same way about him. Go read all about love in Whistler.

From a Google Image Search – Boston Globe Book Review

London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for the Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe is either shocking or not depending on how much you know or suspect about modern cities. The story unfolds like an extended episode of 20/20 (the TV show). This is a nonfiction book which gives you all the known evidence in the case of the death of Zac Brettler who jumps, falls, or is pushed from the fifth floor of an apartment building that faces the Thames River.

London has become home to people who feel they belong because their country of origin was once part of the British Empire. Akbar Shamji is the son of a wealthy man who ended up in Uganda from India and was forced to leave Uganda when the government took a nationalist turn. London is also full of Russian oligarchs who can buy a degree of freedom from Russian oversight. These émigrés live well. Their homes and apartments are located at posh addresses. Drivers take them where they want to go. When a teenager, who doesn’t fit in anywhere, looks around for “cool” role models, he, Zac decides to pretend to be the son of a Russian oligarch. He’s good at it. He adopts the accented English, the mannerisms, and the lifestyle of the role he has chosen. He seems wealthy because he has access to some money held in trust for him until he turned eighteen. 

Zac has worried his family for several years. He comes home rarely and when he does, he drops his new persona. He mentions his friends, especially Akbar, to his parents but he keeps his two lives separate. 

How did Zac end up dead, face down, in the mud at the edge of the Thames? The cameras across the Thames at MI6 show him falling from the fifth-floor outdoor balcony of Verinder Sharma (aka Indian Dave) but the cameras are too far away to see if he was pushed. If the fall was induced by violent threats or mental torment inside the apartment, the cameras would be no help.

It’s an interesting read. In my case I listened to the book on tape which I would recommend. Could London and other cities exercise greater control over émigrés whose wealth is suspect or if the source of their wealth is suspect? Why do Akbar and Verinder seem to have the run of the place when others may be subject to closer attention? Verinder as Indian Dave has a reputation for violence and even for killing perceived enemies. Most people know that Verinder and Indian Dave are the same person. How is it that he is never apprehended? Zac certainly chose the wrong men to befriend, but they seemed like mentors. 

Follow the author as he collects and shows the reader the evidence. Decide what you think happened. What do you think about Zac’s parents? Do parents of problem teens often avoid confrontation to escape their offspring’s anger? Do you think the events that led to Zac’s fall will ever be discovered?