These Precious Days is a collection of essays by the internationally prize-winning and bestselling author ANN PATCHETT. Ann provides us with an insightful and thoughtful collection of essays that examine the precariousness of life through exploring her own memories of friends, family, love, failure, success, and death. AKINA HANSEN reports.

The last two years has been an awakening of sorts for many. The reality that we are not invincible and that our lives and those we hold most dear are fragile, has reminded us of what’s truly important when faced with a crisis.

On a Thursday morning in Sydney, I video called Ann Patchett, the bestselling author of Bel Canto and the Dutch House. As her screen illuminated, I was met by a brightly filled room, and a warm face. The sound of a distant lawn mower hummed in the background as Ann chatted to me about her latest book, These Precious Days, from her living room in Nashville. Her book is a collection of essays that have been informed by previous works. In them she recounts moments in her life from childhood through to the pandemic, exploring the precariousness of life while ranging across topics such as friends old and new, family and love, success and failure, and death.

Ann was born in Los Angeles, California, to Frank Patchett, a police officer, and Jeanne Ray, a nurse. Her parents divorced when she was five and subsequently her mother remarried a man called Mike and they moved with him to Nashville. When Ann was 24, Mike and her mother parted ways, and a few years later her mother married Darrell.

In her essay ‘Three Fathers’ she delves into her relationships with each father and looks at how their distinct qualities shaped her as a person. From a young age, she wanted to pursue a career in writing but, to her dismay, her father, Frank, initially failed to take her aspirations seriously.

‘We saw each other one week a year. I would write him letters, and there would be lots of punctuation and grammatical and spelling mistakes, and that’s how he judged me.’ Despite this, she understands that his apprehension came from a place of love and care.

‘My father came from such a poor family. So of course, he wanted me to be safe. He didn’t want me to be poor. He didn’t want me to be scared. He wanted me to be able to take care of myself and to be safe. And so he felt that he was really helping me to be safe, the way a parent would help their child to be safe. And then if you see it that way, it seems very loving and kind.’

Over the course of her career she overcame various challenges with her father’s guidance.

‘My dad was so tough, and I think he really made me tough … my dad would just be like get back to work, it doesn’t make any difference what anybody else says about you.’

All three of her fathers died in the succession that they married her mother, and their deaths in turn highlighted the expansiveness of her love for them and their love for her.

Each of her essays within this book, reflects on significant moments and people within her life. And while there is humour and joy within these pages, there’s also a running theme about death that tethers these pieces together.

The title essay, These Precious Days, was previously published in Harper’s magazine and inspired Ann to compile this collection of essays.

It’s a moving story about friendship and love that unfolded in 2017 when Ann read Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks and ended up sending an endorsement letter to his editor. A few weeks later she was contacted by his publicist and asked to interview the actor in DC for his book tour. In an unexpected turn of events, it was Tom Hanks’s assistant, Sookie, that Ann was drawn to and who this story is about.

It is the height of the pandemic and all three of them navigate this tumultuous period as a life affirming friendship develops.

‘You know, I’ve had that experience a few times in my life. And all I can say is, it’s almost romantic without being romantic. That idea that you see somebody, and you just think, “Oh, you, you, I’m going to know you”. And it’s so weird and especially weird when the person she was with was Tom Hanks, you know, and she’s kind of under this giant shadow, and so unassuming, so silent, so just there to serve. And I don’t know, maybe in that sense, I saw something of myself in her,’ says Ann.

After their first meeting, Sookie and Ann would continue to correspond via email and eventually Ann learns about Sookie’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis. The story follows Sookie as she joins a pancreatic cancer trial in Nashville and stays with Ann and her husband during her treatment.

It is the height of the pandemic and all three of them navigate this tumultuous period as a life affirming friendship develops.

Despite there being over 15 000 kilometres between us, as Ann talks about Sookie, her sincerity and love for her is palpable. And as the late afternoon light engulfs her face – she tells me that she had realised about a month into Sookie’s stay that she was going to write about her and their friendship, telling Sookie, ‘I’m going to write this because I have to write it. And if you and I are the only two people in the world who ever read it, that’s fine. But I’m going to write it for myself. ’

This essay ultimately allowed Sookie to see herself in a new light and, in turn she encouraged Ann to publish it. ‘She really loved it and it honestly feels like one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life because it was so important to her and I was showing her not only how I saw her, but how other people saw her.

‘She thought of everything in terms of colour and imagery. And that’s how she communicated. So she’d not had any of those tough conversations with friends and family about being sick. And that essay really opened up the opportunity to have those conversations,’ Ann says.

Ann contemplates the fragility of life throughout her book and, particularly in this essay, she is struck by the different variables that inform our lives – that despite being sick with cancer, ‘we could kill [Sookie] from COVID, or she could die in a tornado. Or, you know, like any of the other things, freak things that were going on around here while she was here. That just made me think so much about how it is people actually die and how little control we have over it.’

She skilfully explores the interconnectedness of life and death and the uncertainty of it all through out her book, from her piece about her marriage to her husband, Karl, and his love of aviation and the risks that come with flying, through to the loss of her friend Lucy Grealy, who was taken far too early.

While Ann’s intent wasn’t to write a book about death, towards the end of her writing and reworking, it became increasingly obvious what her stories had in common.

These Precious Days is ultimately a call to her readers to embrace life and the small moments with the people we love.

‘This is it, you know, that this is really beautiful, this is what we have … And when you think about death, a lot of what you wind up thinking about is how beautiful your life is, and how you would rather not leave it and what you want to do before you have to leave it, and that’s what it is. So, if somebody could come away with something from this book, it would be these are precious days. No, let’s really, really appreciate the time that we have.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ann Patchett is the author of over nine novels. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Patchett has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships.

In November, 2011, she opened Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, with her business partner Karen Hayes. She has since become a spokesperson for independent booksellers, championing books and bookstores on NPR, The Colbert Report (including the series finale), Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, The Martha Stewart Show, and The CBS Early Show, among many others. Along with James Patterson, she was the honorary chair of World Book Night. In 2012 she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Ann Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender, and their dog, Sparky. Follow along with Parnassus Books on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.