A Word on Words; 3606; Ann Patchett

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature ideas for more than three decades this is word on words juan johnson are unwelcome once again

the word on words our guest today is an added whose previous books include of truth and beauty bel canto taft the modern rumba mcneely been here every welcome and headed toward onwards think we're talk about wrong you and that the only cure latest and i think the best of song really terrific fiction ranking prison b he was nonfiction of course paul ii enemy and taken with the story bel canto it and i knew that that it was grounded in the fact of an event with an unexciting in some ways tragic event i didn't know what to expect each time i read one of your books you take me into a different world and on the last place i expected you would take me it wasn't the

and in boston politics the periphery of boston politics and then that you would take me into a family that had the character and complex universe well let's talk about the doral and the dog well it certainly is a world you know and seeing you again i'm thinking i'm alive and call you and i was halfway through this book person of life verna doyle was the former mayor of boston in his wife bernadette had one child sullivan and then could have no more and in her desperation trying trying to have children they wound up adopting a child an african american infant named teddy and then by loch they were able to also get

attendees brother who was two years older tip and so say have been their of boston with one twelve year old white irish catholic boys and two adopted black sons and it works out very well except for the fact that bernadette dies and joyless left to raise these three boys on his sound and his goal is to raise one of them to be why not you know i guess you have a bowl of another note another hour who had similar ideas who had four sons and just kept watching them out like baseball they were all white midnight and another tribe that that bubble is not to be rewarded with a song you know you begin yet again with this statue of the virgin of a red haired mary

fine you say that there was an asset to her recollection of the fact that she will both child and mother and an end the statue has passed down from one generation to where the myths surrounding it and it's a lot of the great grandfather bernadette great grandfather and he told a parable i got such a terrible wonderful law it was a lie that lived there was passed along except for a couple points in the book when the truth would help right talk about world that you know that the book is a startling thing about the book is

that you put me in one situation and i'm a marsh in the characters and then i'm in another another informant wanted and i'm talkin about marion the statue and bernadette and her death and how much the world lost and they were talking about two and teddy these two young black men who come from childhood to manhood just in a couple of chapters and then you put me inside of the local museum and where tip is immersed in fishes theology ideology as boyle says jurors under the world really need an island if yellen says each story

has a surprise startling surprise he's chairman put in a new environment i learned something moore i just wonder in the writing of it how you change pace from one scene to the other it was such a what seems to be facile what seems to be used and the island but you know be aware that you're changing place for the reader well its sure i am as i worked on this book for such a long time i read over five years and i kept putting it down and picking something else up doing another project coming back to it how a lot of time to get it right that the book pretty much takes place over twenty four hours except for that scene with the statue in the area but it's a but it's a one day store yes it is and it and i would have always wanted to write a book that was a little bit like a swiss watch

you know that he took the back off one called as i was going to take you to the next car and so often what i want to do in a book is everything i feel like i didn't do in the last book and bel canto was very languid in terms of the time it is it's the book that time forgot time is suspended they don't go outside there is no weather this year the hostages swat the trap that they get out of their lair the end of it all you know is it's it's a little bit like what was that movie lost horizon say it's a little bit like lost horizons or the magic mountain if you're gonna be highbrow this story i wanted every every minute literally to be accounted for because that's what i didn't do before and so i did spend an awful lot of time fitting things together puzzling things out too to make sure every scene takes you want to the next to the next and it's done beautifully and it's in some ways it's a mistress or in every way it's a mystery story and that's my view of it

tom a new grammy with the statue and then you get me inside his moderate your family and then you take me there listener jesse jackson well let's talk about let's talk about the characters you created you got the world and you know you know that you know the layer i hardly ever recognize never introduced and public events in a more finely there is a cop at a crucial moment this is oh yeah i remember you you know it made and i needed that at that moment so there is no oil that any loses bernadette genoa pediatrician examining little chip and teddy touches her throat and says you feel a lump and in should go and then and then but we don't know until much later that's it

and teddy and oh well as one of them says were being stalked of love your stalker another change a place and suddenly they've been here jesse jackson and they're leaving the oil typically and somebody took almost loses his life there's an accident not in the backdrop of our lives there is sullen the old aboard and solomon most gambler leone solomon is sort of a film is to go figure and africa living kampala kampala i you know it's it's interesting that you bring these pieces together this almost tragic accident black woman literally saved his

life and almost loses her own in the process did you know she was at the outset five years before you started on this book did you know she was going to save his life and did you know who she was crucial read the full did you plotted to that degree oh yes absolutely i thought everything well in advance and i spend years working on the plot before i start to write it but it it's put together i think that you can write a book that is that plot driven and that intricate and sort of see how it unfolds as you go along but it's like knitting one of those big complicated irish sweaters with fifteen needles hanging off the front you know you gotta have a pattern or you're just been a wonderful mass but what you what we're just talk about some of the older brother in the

white son solomon who shares a secret with his father that borders on scrapes his cell along who fled and really just came back with twenty four hours he had to be there or that he has a role to play in helping these two boys find out the person with a mother now the law but you also create a roman catholic priest uncle sol of fans fall of saddam it is always sort of misty proceed to be a faith healer by some people not by far the songs and direct from the door open own father sullivan i was certain

knowing their flirtation with contemporary life and writing his novel that you don't turn out to be a pedophile it is far from a far from him but i've got an idea i guess a i guess sullivan had to be their father someone had to be there because it turns out no mystery the new holding back with regard to him fire sullivan visited a structure in this book that really no one should pick up on it's just something that i did for myself which is the three boys are structured as the three term on soft brothers unit at justice to say the oldest son his passion life and the one who's always messing up and getting in terrible trouble the second son of science and reason cool to cold logic issues and the third

son teddy is allie osha who loves father is awesome yeah father's awesome was sort of the borderline saint but the real mentor so when i put this priest in the story i was really thinking in terms of dostoyevsky and again that's so pretentious but it give me something about what well i mean it doesn't give me something that don't want to go down that road but i'd put on so fascinated with with these three brothers it kelly belong i think that to a large extent it's to my mind it's a story about politics and about social responsibility which is the thing that i can't stop thinking about these days and in these certainly the last five years that i've been working on it and is it enough to be a smart person a good person a talented person and people of those abilities for your own self and your own interests doyle says it's not enough doses you have to give back

that if you receive so much you have to turn back and the boys you know nothing of sacrifice having been perfectly raised in a very happy life and that they are interested in giving back and as a tip to present a great scientific mind that he really just wants to stay locked up in the basement of this museum and study vicious doesn't really wanna become a doctor which he dubs briefly i should add also an entity to it there is a sort of netherworld auditor i don't mean that he's irresponsible anybody is late for everything he's got one way off the track off the track that they put together in the practice of law as we go forward but boy when you but when you think about teddy and that tension far memorizing famous speeches money goes to this and then with his father and his brother doyle

has insisted on giving women their lives and jesse jackson hoping jesse will inspire then salopek says when he couldn't do it all this portion of the antenna gets up before jesse's picks and give this huge speech from the convention right it's amazing to me mom they will pop up at any moment and it was to me i mean we're you from eugene debs a couple of times there is no way to get that wonderful and so while he is never worried should believe when he should be he also he also adds vitality and land and real rigor to the story i'm guy i guess i got i got caught up in the mystery the mystery you know after the

attitude is almost a bike or saved by a woman who was hurt terribly broken hip concussion broken ribs broken rib has to have surgery is something where is this going on the first time i you know maybe i should've gotten it earlier back when i was a den three year comes in the moment in the hospital this woman to the city as in the state has a little dollop of eleven years old kenya as in the country and an aunt and him here we are in the hospital her mother unconscious hardly sedated and she's sitting there with a door on the two boys and suddenly she says to them but

don't ever think a wonder or worry about your mother at that moment we don't dumb me on thinking bernadette so are they so it and that's exactly right the period there is no trick there's no clue there is unknown i don't want the reader to see that coming know him because the characters don't when someone says tell me about your mother do you think about her mother of course didn't think about bernadette the mother they have been loving and missing their whole life they didn't think about the person who gave them up for adoption because they were too busy thinking about their mother who they lost and that you can think about two mothers who have left you you can only think about one and so when that question is asked because kenya wants to go home with them they don't want to take her home and vote no no iron and for reasons that are logical you

can't just walk out of the hospital a strange trial but again it all goes back to politics this is very much the story of the intersection of wealth impala poverty and who we are responsible for are we responsible for the people in our immediate family are responsible for under czarist or are we responsible to a larger community and that moment where they are forced to take kenyan and is the moment that they are they actually go outside of their world even doyle who talks the talk and is a good liberal democrat and has adopted children but everything that he does and everything he takes on he doesn't his own terms and and now here's a situation that that is not on his own terms a child he doesn't choose to take in the once it's out of control absolutely no he has no control over where this is going to lead then have no inkling initially thought were impossibly

so you knew at that you there was the statue and then there was these to baby boys and then moved into manhood you know living stopped sure i'm sure it's funny i didn't actually think about it as stalking for a long time i thought of it as just an act of abundant waffle in a new bed and then about halfway through life size of life i thought this is a little creepy and the fact that she is not gotten on with her life and the fact that she's really in some ways not allowing kenya to have a life because they're constantly driving around after these boys at a different at a distance and one of the courses that comes up again and again in this book is i didn't see her from the man who had served the car to the boys all i never saw her i never saw her well she didn't mean to be seen but i think it's also a case that those who have

tended not to see those who don't have and this whole world of the housing projects of cathedral that is two blocks away from their houses a world they don't see they've been penetrated the world they don't know much about that world and she is she is their tennessee is their their mother is there the policy for them but she wasn't there for them to be there for her she uses a was eliminated it was razed the fixation it's an obsession but it's complicated because she gets there for herself and she is there for them as well they're a lot of similarities between doyle antenna say because they're to parents who are trying to do what's best and the dow really know what that is and they are also two people who are

capable of making great sacrifices and in making these sacrifices what they wind up with our grip of children who are incapable of making fabulous and they come from different worlds but they have the same first initial politics yes hers is almost as revelers and she's at a jesse jackson the night rather anderson thought that answer and anne and her daughter kenya is there on the floor doing homework well everybody's waiting for jesse and it's an accident that she sees that soil actually open to a good night and they want to be somewhere else solomon when he founded its own says to them at some point something like you know that little bit over there is really taken over the waters to be in politics right and none of them was interested and write an end and do well the only person in the book who is able to absorb dahl's lesson is tennessee she's the only one who released listens and who really understands that politics

at its best is it is a form of a great leadership and and great gladness at its very best xiang i don't know him by like tennessee i don't mean somebody gave a tune for adoption because i mean somebody who has that and comes out a party totally committed to do in the bed she possibly can for hers she gave those children of a close vote for that gas and she kept kenya macos she thought you would never know about it like that yes because i think the world is full of those people i mean that there's a dozen of the women who were lifting their babies up for the last helicopter out of hand on adding those of the women who were saying i want so want a better life for my

child but i'll give them and it's putting moses in the basketball russians isn't it it's it is in some way the ultimate ultimate act of a lot of un but then of course uncertainty follows her her whole life of course you know be willing to do it i found that i just if i think back over the times you've been here for each of these novels each a powerful in different story he won awards and awards awards i think this is the best book you've written negotiating its hopes up i think it's the best of the river and i

hated the grammy and it held me all the way through and i don't think that has anything to do with my religious background i'd only as elaine do have my political background this is a story this is twenty four points in the life of a family and then extended family and from the time the statue enters into the picture until the statue at the very end is still in the picture it held me and grabbed me and held me and by low i you think about your coming you wrote all these books about your own sense of this book i write books entirely from myself and i'd never think about who's going to read them or what's going to happen to them when i'm writing them their mind and i write the story i want to read and the story i need to hear that i'm not finding some place and it's important to me that it is complex enough and hard enough that will hold my interest or

five years it's important to me that it raises the bar from whatever i did the last time not necessarily that it's better because you're never going to have a life in which everything you do is always better than the last thing you did that if i learn something every book and so hopefully i take what i learned and bel canto i learned and truth and beauty what i've learned in all of these books apply it to the next one and raise the bar and getting over the bar is really often hackers that you feel like ok and i've gone outside of my comfort zone i i have reached for something that was a little outside of my grasp and i've done my best what you've done your best with this as far as i'm concerned we ran out of time thank you it's great to have you back and it's great that all of you here and fight evil watching we've been talking with and badgered about her great new book run and dancing and offer a word on words keep reading

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