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A review by apriltrepagnier
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I have loved every Ann Patchett book I have ever read...this one is my favorite. Honest, sometimes raw, often insightful, occasionally funny, this collection of essays is just magnificent. As a writer, I found much of it encouraging. This goes solidly into the "will read it again and again" pile.
"All the while I understood it was fiction. I knew the narrator was a made-up person. The author very likely had never been to an orphanage before. I understood this not because there was anything shoddy about the work, but because I was concentrating very hard on what it meant to write at that time in my life. Writers need not be confined by their own dull lives and petty Christmas sadness. They could cut new stories out of whole cloth, stories that did not reflect their own experiences but spoke instead to the depth of their emotions. In short, this was something I could do."
"All the while I understood it was fiction. I knew the narrator was a made-up person. The author very likely had never been to an orphanage before. I understood this not because there was anything shoddy about the work, but because I was concentrating very hard on what it meant to write at that time in my life. Writers need not be confined by their own dull lives and petty Christmas sadness. They could cut new stories out of whole cloth, stories that did not reflect their own experiences but spoke instead to the depth of their emotions. In short, this was something I could do."