Ann Patchett reflects on love and relationships in new essay collection
Even when nominally about something else, the essays in These Precious Days are about the weight and grief of relationships. "I was asking what mattered most in this precarious and precious life."
"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.
"Emily Dickinson," she protested. "Flannery O'Connor, James Baldwin, Eudora Welty, Henry James." But the
