Book reviews: ‘Whistler’ and ‘View From the East Wing: A Memoir’

‘Whistler’ by Ann Patchett

“Is there a place in serious literature for kind, happy characters and kind, happy stories?” asked Helen Schulman in The New York Times. Ann Patchett’s “intimate and entertaining” 10th novel “makes the strong case that there is.” The tale begins in high suspense, with 53-year-old Daphne and her husband, Jonathan, seemingly being stalked while visiting New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the stranger trailing them turns out to be Eddie, Daphne’s beloved former stepfather. She hasn’t seen him in over 40 years, and their chance reencounter brings her to tears. As the two reconnect over weeks, then months, fans of Patchett’s past novels will “wait in vain for the terror of Bel Canto or the thrills of State of Wonder,” said Ron Charles in his Substack newsletter. Instead, Whistler is “that loveliest of summer gifts, a story of reconciliation, of old affections renewed, of a family’s circumference enlarged.”

A novel both “radiantly intelligent” and “emotionally wrenching, Whistler is “the exquisite production of an author working at the height of her powers,” said Priscilla Gilman in The Boston Globe. Patchett’s masterfully constructed story intertwines two timelines. In the present, Eddie, a book editor, charms everyone in Daphne’s circle, including her mom, who divorced him decades earlier. The other story thread reveals the cause of the family split: a car crash in which Eddie was in the driver’s seat and both he and 9-year-old Daphne were nearly killed. The two storylines are “intertwined in a way that builds tension, deepens character, and allows for unexpected discoveries,” including why the novel is named Whistler. And even when the characters grapple with heavy subjects, “Patchett’s touch is light, her humor delightful, her empathy generous and vibrant.” Without a doubt, the book is “a magnificent achievement” and “I think it’s her best novel yet.

To me, Whistler is “top-shelf comfort food, the literary equivalent of pricey ice cream,” said Beejay Silcox in The Guardian. Although “we almost care about these vanilla-bean people,” and almost care about their floral arrangements and champagne brunches, it’s “all so neat” and so untouched by lingering sorrows that it “often reads like a gratitude journal.” But there’s “a sly wit and sagacity” to Patchett’s writing that here has been “honed to perfection,” said Leigh Haber in the Los Angeles Times. As it explores family trauma and life’s transitory nature, Whistler proves “sweet but never sentimental, infinitely wise and suffused with love,” and it’s clear that some of its heft owes to Patchett drawing on events from her own life. “I don’t recommend consuming Whistler in one enormous gulp. I dipped in and out, savoring scenes, reflecting on them, occasionally shedding a tear. In other words, I didn’t want it to end.”

‘View From the East Wing: A Memoir’ by Jill Biden

Jill Biden’s best-selling new memoir repeats a very self-serving story, said Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal. Displaying a “mulish unwillingness” to face up to the evidence of her husband’s cognitive decline in 2024, she blames “Democratic elites” for robbing him of the shot he deserved to bounce back from his disastrous June 2024 debate performance and win a second presidential term. She admits he was so off that night that she worried he’d been drugged or was having a stroke. She even reports that she agreed when he afterward whispered to her, “I really f—ed up, didn’t I?” But she insists he remained fully capable of governing, campaigning, and beating a foe she detests, and the result is “a memoir that is at turns delusional, sappy, resentful, and—in a weirdly irresistible way—revelatory of the former first lady’s agitated state of mind.”

“The most charitable interpretation of Jill Biden’s book, particularly the parts dealing with her husband’s aging,” said Jake Tapper in CNN.com, “is that she’s having difficulty accepting what’s been happening to him for years.” Joe’s mental acuity, already visibly declining in 2024, has probably worsened. But she insists that he showed no signs of impairment that summer and that she’d have raised red flags if he had. Those claims are “very difficult to believe, if not just downright false.” And she can argue all she wants that Joe, at any age, would be a better president than our current leader. “But the choice wasn’t Trump vs. Biden. It was Trump vs. which Democrat would be best.”

“View From the East Wing says almost nothing of consequence,” said Scaachi Koul in Slate. Besides filling you in on, say, how many soups were served at a particular state dinner, “it follows all the regular hits for a former first lady’s memoir, reminding you that she’s a good mother and a faithful wife and a dedicated teacher.” But all of its talk about how she and Joe are good people who were doing their best reads like one of those Instagram posts you see from an acquaintance randomly reporting that she and her husband have weathered some storms but are still going strong. “It’s a woman defending her husband to an audience who didn’t ask.”