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.
