Dunedin Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute

Book: These Precious Days (March 2024)

By Ann Patchett

March 14, 2024

‘Any story that starts will also end.’  As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be.  Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming.  Patchett ponders this as she explores family, friendship, marriage, failure, success, and what it all means.

Ranging from the personal – her portrait of the three men, she called her fathers; how a chance encounter with Tom Hank led to one of the most important friendships of her life; how to answer when someone asks why you don’t have children – to the sublime – the unexpected influence of Snoopy; the importance of knitting; the pleasure to be found in children’s books – each essay transforms the particular into the universal, letting us all see our own worlds anew.

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