Kate’s 2¢: “Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett

“Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Jill Fox did a good job of narrating this artfully crafted story, using the Stockholm Syndrum, where the hostages and rebels begin to see each other differently and depend on each other.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Patchett is an American writer, born December 2, 1963. In 2002 she received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Bel Canto.[1][2] Patchett’s other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992),[3] Taft (1994),[4] The Magician’s Assistant (1997), Run (2007),[5] State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023).[6] The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7]

Biography[edit]

Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, to Frank Patchett (a Los Angeles police captain who arrested Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan[8]) and Jeanne Ray (a nurse who later became a novelist).[9] She is the younger of two daughters. Her mother and father divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried and when Patchett was six years old the family moved to Nashville.[10] She has described her stepfather as a “very, very weird guy” who had her carry a gun as early as age sixteen, and she partially attributes her disinterest in texting to his forcing her mother to carry a pager and respond to him on demand.[11]

Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls in Nashville run by the Sisters of Mercy.[3][4] After graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.[12][4]

After college, Ann Patchett attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she lived with the memoirist and poet Lucy Grealy. Their time as roommates and their life-long friendship was the subject of her 2004 memoir Truth & Beauty. In her early twenties Patchett married; however, the marriage lasted only about a year.[13]

In her late twenties, Patchett won a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts;[3] during her time there, she wrote her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992.[3][9] In 2010, she co-founded the bookstore Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes, in Nashville. It opened in November 2011.[14] In 2016, Parnassus Books expanded, adding a bookmobile expanding the reach of the bookstore in Nashville.[15] Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender.[16][17]

Writing[edit]

Patchett’s first published work was in The Paris Review, a story which appeared before she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.[9] For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine,[3] where she wrote primarily non-fiction. The magazine only published one of every five articles she wrote. She ended her relationship with the magazine after getting into a dispute with an editor and exclaiming, “I’ll never darken your door again!”[3]

Patchett has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue.[12] In 1992, she published The Patron Saint of Liars.[4] The novel was made into a television movie of the same title in 1998.[18] Her second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994.[4] Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was released in 1997.[19] In 2001, she achieved a breakthrough with her fourth novel Bel Canto, becoming a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist[20] and winning the PEN/Faulkner Award.[1]

A friend of writer Lucy Grealy, Patchett wrote a memoir about their relationship, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett’s novel, Run,[5] was released in October 2007. What Now?, published in April 2008, is an essay based on a commencement speech she delivered at her alma mater in 2006. She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories.[21] In 2011, she published State of Wonder, a novel set in the Amazon jungle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.[2][22] In 2016 she published the novel Commonwealth to widespread critical acclaim. Patchett called the book her “autobiographical first novel,” explaining, “The wonderful thing about publishing this book at 52 is that I know that I am [already] capable of working from a place of deep imagination.”[23]

In 2019, Patchett published her first children’s book, Lambslide,[24] and the novel The Dutch House,[25] a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[26] In November 2021, she published These Precious Days, an essay collection. In 2023, Ann Patchett published a novel called Tom Lake, and it made The New York Times Best Seller list.[27]

When asked how to encourage people to slow down and contemplate more during a 2024 interview for the BBC, she responded:[28]

Wouldn’t it be lovely if people sat quietly for longer periods of time?… I do, because I write novels for a living… I’m very, very careful with myself because I don’t want anything to disrupt my ability to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time. To that end, I do not watch television under any circumstances, I do not have a cell phone, and I participate in no form of social media. I have never looked at Facebook. That’s kind of interesting, because my bookstore has a huge social media presence and I make videos about the books that I’m reading, but I never watch them.

Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.[29]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Bel canto :: a novel DB54190

Author: Patchett, Ann

Reading Time: 12 hours, 20 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Jill Fox

Subject: Human Relations

The private performance of lyric soprano Roxane Coss entices Japanese industrialist Katsumi Hosokawa to attend a party in his honor in South America. While the audience applauds, guerrillas occupy the mansion taking everyone hostage. As the outer world recedes, relationships between captors and captives come into play. Some strong language. PEN/Faulkner Award. 2001.

New York : HarperCollins, c2001.

Take Action On Bel canto :: a novel

Kate’s 2¢: “The patron saint of liars” by Ann Patchett

“The patron saint of liars” by Ann Patchett

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Mitzi Friedlander did a great job of narrating this story. I found Rose to be a less than likeable character, whose beauty was only skin deep and left a lot of damage in her wake. I didn’t like the ending either

A few take aways:

–The world is full of things we’re better off not knowing.

–The night we lost would never be regained.

–When you get to be that old, you have a better sense of what a problem is.

–Ifpeople do have more than one life in a life-time, they should be careful to make sure the different versions of the past never over-lap.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Patchett is an American writer, born December 2, 1963. In 2002 she received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Bel Canto.[1][2] Patchett’s other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992),[3] Taft (1994),[4] The Magician’s Assistant (1997), Run (2007),[5] State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023).[6] The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7]

Biography[edit]

Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, to Frank Patchett (a Los Angeles police captain who arrested Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan[8]) and Jeanne Ray (a nurse who later became a novelist).[9] She is the younger of two daughters. Her mother and father divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried and when Patchett was six years old the family moved to Nashville.[10] She has described her stepfather as a “very, very weird guy” who had her carry a gun as early as age sixteen, and she partially attributes her disinterest in texting to his forcing her mother to carry a pager and respond to him on demand.[11]

Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls in Nashville run by the Sisters of Mercy.[3][4] After graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.[12][4]

After college, Ann Patchett attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she lived with the memoirist and poet Lucy Grealy. Their time as roommates and their life-long friendship was the subject of her 2004 memoir Truth & Beauty. In her early twenties Patchett married; however, the marriage lasted only about a year.[13]

In her late twenties, Patchett won a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts;[3] during her time there, she wrote her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992.[3][9] In 2010, she co-founded the bookstore Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes, in Nashville. It opened in November 2011.[14] In 2016, Parnassus Books expanded, adding a bookmobile expanding the reach of the bookstore in Nashville.[15] Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender.[16][17]

Writing[edit]

Patchett’s first published work was in The Paris Review, a story which appeared before she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.[9] For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine,[3] where she wrote primarily non-fiction. The magazine only published one of every five articles she wrote. She ended her relationship with the magazine after getting into a dispute with an editor and exclaiming, “I’ll never darken your door again!”[3]

Patchett has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue.[12] In 1992, she published The Patron Saint of Liars.[4] The novel was made into a television movie of the same title in 1998.[18] Her second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994.[4] Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was released in 1997.[19] In 2001, she achieved a breakthrough with her fourth novel Bel Canto, becoming a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist[20] and winning the PEN/Faulkner Award.[1]

A friend of writer Lucy Grealy, Patchett wrote a memoir about their relationship, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett’s novel, Run,[5] was released in October 2007. What Now?, published in April 2008, is an essay based on a commencement speech she delivered at her alma mater in 2006. She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories.[21] In 2011, she published State of Wonder, a novel set in the Amazon jungle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.[2][22] In 2016 she published the novel Commonwealth to widespread critical acclaim. Patchett called the book her “autobiographical first novel,” explaining, “The wonderful thing about publishing this book at 52 is that I know that I am [already] capable of working from a place of deep imagination.”[23]

In 2019, Patchett published her first children’s book, Lambslide,[24] and the novel The Dutch House,[25] a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[26] In November 2021, she published These Precious Days, an essay collection. In 2023, Ann Patchett published a novel called Tom Lake, and it made The New York Times Best Seller list.[27]

When asked how to encourage people to slow down and contemplate more during a 2024 interview for the BBC, she responded:[28]

Wouldn’t it be lovely if people sat quietly for longer periods of time?… I do, because I write novels for a living… I’m very, very careful with myself because I don’t want anything to disrupt my ability to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time. To that end, I do not watch television under any circumstances, I do not have a cell phone, and I participate in no form of social media. I have never looked at Facebook. That’s kind of interesting, because my bookstore has a huge social media presence and I make videos about the books that I’m reading, but I never watch them.

Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.[29]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The patron saint of liars DB36244

Author: Patchett, Ann

Reading Time: 12 hours, 30 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Mitzi Friedlander

Subject: General Fiction

Pregnant, Rose Clinton leaves be- hind in California the short-lived marriage she had misinterpreted as a sign from God, and starts the long drive to Kentucky. She plans a temporary stay at Saint Eliza- beth’s, a home for unwed mothers, but instead, her reluctance to give up her baby leads to an addi- tional marriage. The next fifteen years at Saint Elizabeth’s are narrated first by Rose’s newest husband and then by her daughter Cecilia. Strong language.

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

Take Action On The patron saint of liars

#from BookShare™:

Synopsis

Since her first publication in 1992, celebrated novelist Ann Patchett has crafted a number of elegant novels, garnering accolades and awards along the way. Now comes a beautiful reissue of the best-selling debut novel that launched her remarkable career.St. Elizabeth’s, a home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky, usually harbors its residents for only a little while. Not so Rose Clinton, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed, and stays. She plans to give up her child, thinking she cannot be the mother it needs. But when Cecilia is born, Rose makes a place for herself and her daughter amid St. Elizabeth’s extended family of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls. Rose’s past won’t be kept away, though, even by St. Elizabeth’s; she cannot remain untouched by what she has left behind, even as she cannot change who she has become in the leaving.

Details

Copyright Date

1992

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

ISBN-13

9780547548401

Kate’s 2¢: “What Now?” by Ann Patchett

“What Now?” by Ann Patchett

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed this short commencement speech. It is full of wit and good advice.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ann Patchett is an American writer, born December 2, 1963. In 2002 she received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Bel Canto.[1][2] Patchett’s other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992),[3] Taft (1994),[4] The Magician’s Assistant (1997), Run (2007),[5] State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023).[6] The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[7]

Biography[edit]

Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, to Frank Patchett (a Los Angeles police captain who arrested Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan[8]) and Jeanne Ray (a nurse who later became a novelist).[9] She is the younger of two daughters. Her mother and father divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried and when Patchett was six years old the family moved to Nashville.[10] She has described her stepfather as a “very, very weird guy” who had her carry a gun as early as age sixteen, and she partially attributes her disinterest in texting to his forcing her mother to carry a pager and respond to him on demand.[11]

Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a private Catholic school for girls in Nashville run by the Sisters of Mercy.[3][4] After graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.[12][4]

After college, Ann Patchett attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where she lived with the memoirist and poet Lucy Grealy. Their time as roommates and their life-long friendship was the subject of her 2004 memoir Truth & Beauty. In her early twenties Patchett married; however, the marriage lasted only about a year.[13]

In her late twenties, Patchett won a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts;[3] during her time there, she wrote her first novel The Patron Saint of Liars, which was published in 1992.[3][9] In 2010, she co-founded the bookstore Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes, in Nashville. It opened in November 2011.[14] In 2016, Parnassus Books expanded, adding a bookmobile expanding the reach of the bookstore in Nashville.[15] Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender.[16][17]

Writing[edit]

Patchett’s first published work was in The Paris Review, a story which appeared before she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.[9] For nine years, Patchett worked at Seventeen magazine,[3] where she wrote primarily non-fiction. The magazine only published one of every five articles she wrote. She ended her relationship with the magazine after getting into a dispute with an editor and exclaiming, “I’ll never darken your door again!”[3]

Patchett has written for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, ELLE, GQ, Gourmet, and Vogue.[12] In 1992, she published The Patron Saint of Liars.[4] The novel was made into a television movie of the same title in 1998.[18] Her second novel Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in fiction in 1994.[4] Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was released in 1997.[19] In 2001, she achieved a breakthrough with her fourth novel Bel Canto, becoming a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist[20] and winning the PEN/Faulkner Award.[1]

A friend of writer Lucy Grealy, Patchett wrote a memoir about their relationship, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett’s novel, Run,[5] was released in October 2007. What Now?, published in April 2008, is an essay based on a commencement speech she delivered at her alma mater in 2006. She is the editor of the 2006 volume of the anthology series The Best American Short Stories.[21] In 2011, she published State of Wonder, a novel set in the Amazon jungle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.[2][22] In 2016 she published the novel Commonwealth to widespread critical acclaim. Patchett called the book her “autobiographical first novel,” explaining, “The wonderful thing about publishing this book at 52 is that I know that I am [already] capable of working from a place of deep imagination.”[23]

In 2019, Patchett published her first children’s book, Lambslide,[24] and the novel The Dutch House,[25] a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[26] In November 2021, she published These Precious Days, an essay collection. In 2023, Ann Patchett published a novel called Tom Lake, and it made The New York Times Best Seller list.[27]

When asked how to encourage people to slow down and contemplate more during a 2024 interview for the BBC, she responded:[28]

Wouldn’t it be lovely if people sat quietly for longer periods of time?… I do, because I write novels for a living… I’m very, very careful with myself because I don’t want anything to disrupt my ability to concentrate on one thing for long periods of time. To that end, I do not watch television under any circumstances, I do not have a cell phone, and I participate in no form of social media. I have never looked at Facebook. That’s kind of interesting, because my bookstore has a huge social media presence and I make videos about the books that I’m reading, but I never watch them.

Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.[29]

FromBookShare™:

What Now?

Ann Patchett

9780061842467

2008

Contains images

Contains images

Synopsis

Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by bestselling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now?From student to line cook to teacher to waitress and eventually to award-winning author, Patchett’s own life has taken many twists and turns that make her exploration genuine and resonant. As Patchett writes, “‘What now?’ represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life.” She highlights the possibilities the unknown offers and reminds us that there is as much joy in the journey as there is in reaching the destination.

Details

Copyright Date

2008

Publisher

HarperCollins

ISBN-13

9780061842467

Bookshare® and Benetech® are registered trademarks of Beneficent Technology, Inc. © Copyright 2026, Beneficent Technology, Inc.

Cornucopia: Behind Our Eyes 20th anniversary

Hello, Beautiful People,

I was leery of Sanford’s newly organized group being sponsored by a Writer’s Union, because it was during the time that the professional teachers organization I belonged to was being taken over by the teacher’s union, instead of remaining a professional entity.

While I shadowed the newly organized group in March and April, 2006, I didn’t

officially join until early September 2006.

I was instrumental in submitting the original rough draft of the By-Laws April 10, 2008, which would be needed for us to become incorporated, then to become a non-profit organization

There were numerous iterations of the By-Laws efficiently over seen by John Wesley Smith as our organization grew.

Behind Our Eyes 2: A Second Look was Published in 2013

Bobbi LaChance Bubier was the primary editor. I was one of several committee members who had organized the anthology. We had contracted with a publisher.  When Bobbi passed away, we asked the publisher for an extension to the due date, but there had already been one extension to the due date.

I offered to spearhead the final push to publication.

There were 67 contributors, so my husband and I spent a lot of concentrated time to finalize the lengthy manuscript to submit to Pat Gott, the publisher.

We often tried to get a handle of what royalties were passed on to us by the publisher, but we have been unsuccessful.

It was a steep learning curve that we applied to the third anthology.

Our marketing strategy included a professionally developed trailer, spearheaded by Donna Grahman.

   Copies of “Behind Our Eyes 2: A Second Look” are available through Amazon.com, Kindle, Nook, and Barnes and Noble.

There have been so many memorable people along the way. Do some of you remember Gertie Poole, who went by the name Renegade?

Sanford Rosenthal and Albert Cooper?

What about Ernie Jones and his Old Crow stories and Deon Lyons The other side of the glass wall?

It has been wonderful to observe how the initial group of about 27 writers has expanded into well over 100 writers with different disabilities and the plethora of innovative ideas each brings to our craft of writing.

All I can say is: Thank you for these 20 years of opportunities and w r I t e on, friends.

 #format

Hello, Beautiful People,

I was leery of Sanford’s

newly organized group

being sponsored by

a Writer’s Union,

because it was during

the time that the

professional teachers organization

I belonged to

was being taken over by

the teacher’s union,

instead of remaining a professional entity.

While I shadowed

the newly organized group

in March and April, 2006,

I officially joined in

early September 2006.

I was instrumental

in submitting the

original rough draft of

the By-Laws April 10, 2008,

which would be needed

for us to become incorporated,

then to become

a non-profit organization

There were numerous iterations

of the By-Laws

efficiently over seen

by John Wesley Smith

as our organization grew.

Behind Our Eyes 2: A Second Look

was Published in 2013

Bobbi LaChance Bubier

was the primary editor.

I was one of several

committee members

who had organized the anthology.

We had contracted

with a publisher. 

When Bobbi passed away,

we asked the publisher

for an extension

to the due date,

but there had already been one extension to the due date.

I offered to spearhead

the final push to publication.

There were 67 contributors,

so my husband and I

spent a lot of concentrated time

to finalize

the lengthy manuscript

to submit to Pat Gott, the publisher.

We often tried to

get a handle of what royalties

were passed on to us by the publisher,

but we have been unsuccessful.

It was a steep learning curve

that we applied to the

third anthology.

Our marketing strategy included

a professionally developed trailer,

spearheaded by Donna Grahman.

   Copies of “Behind Our Eyes 2: A Second Look”

are available through Amazon.com, Kindle, Nook, and Barnes and Noble.

There have been so many memorable people

along the way.

Do some of you remember Gertie Poole, who went by the name Renegade?

Sanford Rosenthal and Albert Cooper?

What about Ernie Jones and his Old Crow stories and

Deon Lyons The other side of the glass wall?

It has been wonderful

to observe how the initial group

of about 27 writers

has expanded into

well over 100 writers

with different disabilities and

the plethora of innovative ideas

that each brings to our craft of writing.

All I can say is:

Thank you for these 20 years

of opportunities and

w r I t e on, friends.

The recording of our twentieth anniversary celebration on Sunday , March22, 2026: