This book is not one story, but a collection - happy, sad, informative, intimate - that have accumulated over American novelist Ann Patchett's years of writing for a range of publications.
''Whatever I've become as an essayist, this collection bears the stamp of a writer who got her start in women's magazines: it is full of example and advice,'' she writes in the introduction.
It's an excellent book to pick up and read in digestible bites, some more palatable than others. I've been an admirer of her writing for years, but had read only her fiction, so was delighted to see the second essay was a lengthy one on how she became a writer and perfected her craft.
However, from initial anticipation I found it too dense and detailed; useful for aspiring writers but more than a casual reader would want to know. This and her dog stories were my least favourite, but I loved the others.
She involves the reader on a personal level, making you feel privileged to be taken into her confidence while she unpicks the story of her marriage, describes the care of a sick grandmother, muses on the perils of divorce and provides practical help to an elderly nun re-entering the world after a convent closure.
There's a conservative South Carolinian politician's attempt to ban one of her books, an account of the worst flooding in Nashville's history, her experiences trying out for the Los Angeles Police Force, the merits of short stories, travelling America in a motor-home, starting up her famous bookstore - the list of topics is wide enough to have universal appeal.
- Patricia Thwaites is a retired Dunedin schoolteacher.
