The story is simple on the surface. Daphne Fuller and her
husband are walking through New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which by no
coincidence houses a thorough history of human relations as depicted in art. By
chance, Daphne’s former stepfather, Eddie Triplett, encounters them. Daphne was only nine when her mother divorced
Eddie and went on to remarry and have more children. The pair renew their brief
time together and begin to confront an auto accident that they experienced
together. Bits and pieces of the past are slowly recovered they begin to see
how long-buried actions of love and courage influenced their lives and all of their
families’ lives. An aphorism is trotted out. “Everything is
sentimental. All of it matters and none of it matters.” I identified with this
when Daphne’s husband has to help his sister empty out and sell their mother’s
house. We spend a life accumulating memories and things, and then we have to
deal with the emptying out. Selling the family home for many of us has been a
traumatic experience. You won’t ever
enter it again or sleep there again. It’s
a feeling “ like you’re going to fall into the past and it’s never going to let
go of you.” You must come to grips with the fact that “Everything will end. Get
used to that. No one wants change, but
it will.”
What more do you need in a good novel? Ms. Patchett creates
substantive, believable characters. In stages they are both human and humorous
while they demonstrate an affirmation that love and acceptance are the glue
that holds human life together.
I give it 4 out of 5.
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