These Precious Days: Essays

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I would love to stay with you for my first night or two in Nashville—it would be wonderful to spend some time with you.

I’d be grateful if you’d pray for her,” I said, because while I was uncertain about prayer in general, I believed unequivocally in the power of Sister Nena’s prayers. I’d seen her work in action. Cover Stories": A fascinating explanation of how book covers are created, specifically Ann Patchett's book covers. Oh, she’s darling,” Sister Nena said. Sooki left for yoga just as the waitress was bringing our eggs. As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart. The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Patchett, Ann. These Precious Days. HarperCollins, 2021.The First Thanksgiving": When Ann was a freshman at Sarah Lawrence College in New York City she couldn't go home to Nashville, Tennessee for Thanksgiving. Because she didn't know any one well enough to be invited home for the long weekend, she stayed in the dorm. What happened next is both hilarious and heartbreaking. It’s so important to twist this way,” the gentle voice of the yoga teacher reminded us. “You’re detoxifying all your inner organs.” In "The Moment Nothing Changed," when Patchett thinks her husband is dying, she realizes how much he enriches her life. First the tornadoes,” Sooki said, taking picture after picture, the giant root systems pulling up slabs of earth taller than Karl, the bright spring grass meeting the sidewalk at right angles. Sooki has recurrent pancreatic cancer and, just as the pandemic hits, arrives in Nashville to take part in a clinical trial. Patchett insists she stay with them, and so begins a profound deepening of their fledgling rapport. With the world turned upside down, they’re soon heading off on nocturnal rambles and trying medicinal magic mushrooms together.

If I knew nothing about Sooki before she arrived, I knew very little more three weeks later when we were spending all of our days together. Or maybe I should say I was coming to know her without knowing very much about her. People are not composed entirely of their facts, after all. Our interactions stayed in the present: Do you want to go for a walk? How’s the painting going? While we pored over every detail of dinner (Sooki revealed herself to be a great cook), we didn’t talk about her family. I knew that she worried about her ninety-four-year-old mother in Rye Brook, New York, and read to her grandchildren in San Diego over Zoom. When I asked her how she was feeling, she might admit to being a little tired or having a bit of a stomachache, nothing more than that. Tom Hanks was so completely absent from our conversations that I once asked her if he knew where she was. She looked startled. She was serious, but she was also tired, and so I could get her to agree. By the time Sunday came the urgency would have passed. In time, all I would have to say was, “It’s Friday. You always feel this way on Friday.”

Reviews

There was an important piece of information that hadn’t been made clear to Sooki when she came to Nashville; it was that, unlike the FOLFIRINOX, which had carved twenty pounds off her over twenty-four weeks, this course of chemotherapy had no end. She was to stay in the trial, three Wednesdays on, one Wednesday off, until the regime was no longer effective or, to put it another way, until she died. Sooki, I found out, was sixty-four. You can't be a real writer if you don't have children," a famous author once told Ann Patchett when they were both speaking at a book festival. Patchett, whose novels include Bel Canto and Commonwealth, has never wanted kids. june 21, 2019: As of last week, my six-month chemo run is done, and I had a follow up CT scan. My doctor paired up some words I never thought I would hear together: “pancreatic cancer” and “you’re in remission!” It seems like an early declaration, but I’ll take it! Here’s to more time to explore color and enjoy all the people—like you—who make life colorful. She starts with the semi-hilarious tale of her three fathers, her birth father and her mother's two subsequent husbands. While her own father actively discouraged her pursuit of a career in writing, her stepfather, a very successful surgeon, envied her choice - not to mention her success. She tells delicious stories of the many bad novels which he churned out, some of which she had to sell (if not tout) in her Nashville bookstore - even though they were uniformly dreadful.