Whistler with Ann Patchett

**This event has now sold out. To be added to our waiting list please email us at books@mrbsemporium.com**

We couldn’t be more honoured to welcome one of Mr B’s all-time favourite authors, Ann Patchett, for a special evening on a rare UK visit as we celebrate the publication of her simply stunning new novel, Whistler.

From the prizewinning novelist who brought you Bel Canto, The Dutch House, and most recently, Tom Lake, comes a moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures. Whistler paints an intimate portrait of how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything, as we follow a woman reconnecting with her stepfather in their later years.

Ann will be in conversation with Elizabeth McCracken, award-winning author of eight books including  The Hero of This Book, and most recently A Long Game: How to Write Fiction.

Can’t make it to the event? Order a signed and dedicated copy here.

About the book:

When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she doesn’t expect it to be Eddie – her former stepfather. Married to her mother for a short time when Daphne was nine, she hasn’t seen Eddie for many years; not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again now, Daphne and Eddie feel that time has fallen away.

Their earlier relationship was brief but had a profound impact on both of them. Together, they consider not only their past, but the joys of the present and their commitment to face the future together. A moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures, Whistler paints an intimate portrait of how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Ann Patchett leads us with the intelligence, detail, wit and nuance of the greatest chroniclers of human nature and relationships. Nothing escapes her – Rachel Joyce

About the author:

Ann Patchett is the author of eight novels and three works of non-fiction. Her most recent novel The Dutch House was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and longlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize. In 2002 she won the Orange Prize for Fiction with Bel Canto, a prize she has also twice been shortlisted for with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.