These Precious days by Ann Patchett

Review by Eleanor Updegraff

‘Death has no interest in essays,’ writes Ann Patchett in the introduction to her new non-fiction collection, These Precious Days. Though it comes within the context of struggling to write during the pandemic, this statement is a lens through which the entire book can be read: in its vibrant, meandering, eminently joyful way, it seems to be an attempt to write against death. Grief, bereavement and human frailty are never far from these pages – which themselves, in marked counterpoint, absolutely shimmer with life.

Largely made up of essays that have previously appeared in print, These Precious Days leans heavily towards the twin themes of love and friendship, offering insights into Patchett’s career as a writer, and exploring the multiple roles she plays in her life: wife, daughter, sister, member of the community. Of varying length, almost whimsically wide-ranging, they touch on knitting, bookshops, dog ownership and literary greats, consumerism, flying, tornadoes, even Tom Hanks. Taken individually, as they were first published, many are gem-like in their intellectual clarity and luminous ability to capture the finer details. Read together, as a collection, they become extraordinary.

The volume is structured around the titular essay, a remarkable long-form read published earlier this year in Harper’s. In carefully measured, deeply moving prose, Patchett recounts a late-blooming friendship tied to the pandemic in the most unlikely of ways. More than just a personal memoir — and personal it is, often shatteringly so — ‘These Precious Days’ is a chronicle of a changing world, an almost-real-time effort to make sense of what we are living through. Though placed quite late within the collection, it is the backbone against which the rest of the book nestles, and its epilogue, ‘A Day at the Beach’, forms a heart-rending yet fittingly hope-washed conclusion. Like so many of Patchett’s essays, both pieces examine what we stand to lose and, in doing so, point towards all there is to be found.

There is a big message inside this collection, but Patchett also infuses her writing with joy. Much of this, happily, wells from her deep love of books – tools of her trade and anchors in her life. Best known for her fiction (including The Dutch House, Commonwealth, Bel Canto), Patchett is also a prolific essayist and speaker, co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, and passionate advocate of literature and the arts. Her firm belief that books can make life better is inherent in these essays, which dedicate space to influences as diverse as Eudora Welty, John Updike and Snoopy, always with characteristic enthusiasm. ‘A Talk to the Association of Graduate School Deans in the Humanities’ is an oratory tour de force extolling the benefits of a liberal arts education, while a Thanksgiving dinner becomes the vehicle for an important life lesson. ‘Paying close attention to the text, and realizing that books can save you’ is something it is very much worth doing with These Precious Days, too.

 Infectious love of literature notwithstanding, there is a risk that a collection such as this could become cloying, particularly when read in concentrated doses (something it is, admittedly, hard to avoid — Patchett is a virtuoso when it comes to pace and structure). While her exuberant generosity and tendency to find the best in things may not appeal to those of a more cynical bent, the overall tone strikes the right balance with her subject matter, remaining upbeat, self-effacing, shot through with dry and gentle humour. Social expectations of women and the author’s decision not to have children are tackled fiercely in the vignette-based ‘There Are No Children Here’, while Donald Trump’s ascendancy is dispatched with a single line in the highly enjoyable (and admirable) ‘My Year of No Shopping’: ‘our country had swung in the direction of gold leaf’. Yet, strong convictions aside, the essays in These Precious Days contain a disarming sense of searching. Whether discussing people she admires (‘The Worthless Servant’) or confronting her fears around reading old work (‘The Nightstand’), Patchett is unafraid to reveal that, like all of us, she is just another person trying to figure it out as she goes along. 

Witty, relatable and just the right level of heart-warming, These Precious Days is a book for our times. A generous and spirited collection that illuminates life in all its wonder and absurdity, it also pays tribute to the possibilities of the essay form. Following almost two years in which, for many of us, death has come too close for comfort, Patchett takes us by the hand and shows us what makes a life.

These Precious Days is published by Bloomsbury, 23rd November 2021