Glenn Sumi's Reviews > These Precious Days: Essays

Six years ago, I read Ann Patchett’s first collection of essays, This Is The Story Of A Happy Marriage. It was an extraordinary book, not merely a let’s-see-what’s-in-my-filing-cabinet affair to publish between novels. Each piece was carefully crafted and fascinating in its own right. It was so impressive that after I finished my library copy I bought a copy to be able to sample and reread.

This second volume is similarly packed with unforgettable material. The pieces range from lighthearted essays about, say, her husband Karl’s adventures as a pilot, or the importance of book cover jackets, or the role knitting has played in her life. She offers up warm memories about travel, friends (many of them writers) and family members (the opening essay is a beautiful ode to her three fathers: her biological father, her stepfather and then, after her mother divorced, a second stepfather). There’s a very satisfying piece about owning a bookstore, Nashville’s Parnassus Books.

And then there are a group of essays that take on really profound issues: why she never wanted children (and why interviewers insist on tsk-tsking her about it), the illness and death of her father and, in the poignant title piece, the profound friendship she forged with Sooki, an artist and Tom Hanks’s assistant.

I was a little disappointed that Patchett didn’t include her marvellous Vanity Fair cover story on Nashville resident (and fellow book lover) Reese Witherspoon, which went way beyond your typical magazine profile. But I understand why it didn’t make the cut. (You can read it here.)

With some other writers who are primarily novelists – Jonathan Franzen comes to mind – you get the sense that their non-fiction collections are lesser works, written to fulfill contracts between their more lasting and significant fiction. Not so with Patchett. Each piece is beautifully constructed. Nothing seems dashed off for a quick buck or to see one’s byline in print. There’s something timeless about each one.

Precious indeed.