The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

Earlier this year Plum Dragon read “Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett and we’re reading it for BTBL in December. I’ll review it soon. So far, it’s the highest quality book I read in 2015.

In fact, I liked it so much I didn’t want to read anything else by Patchett, feeling sure that such genius strikes a writer only once and I wouldn’t care for her other books. But a week ago I found myself sitting down with her debut novel “The Patron Saint of Liars” and almost immediately I was captivated.

Half way through I was in a rage against the main character.

By the end I was nearly driven mad by the critical lack of understanding I felt the other characters exhibited toward the main character.

And I found myself once again enthralled by Patchett’s story telling. It’s books like hers that make you wonder why you settle for anything less than art when you pick up the written word.

Before I go on let me say that 1. This is your official spoiler alert. 2. I think you should read this book and so 3. I don’t actually recommend reading this review at this point in the space time continuum. Come back to it after you’ve read PSOL. You won’t be sorry for the time out.

For those of you I either can’t convince or who have already read the book let me start by saying that I think Patchett knew exactly what she was doing with her characters. I don’t think that I’m thinking anything she didn’t intend, and the first thing I’m thinking is that this book should have been called The Patron Saint of Cowards (although, granted, the original title is catchier).

Rose, the main character, calls herself a liar. She does lie. Big, huge, rending lies she tells. But that isn’t her greatest fault. Her greatest fault is cowardice.

And her second husband Son and daughter Cecilia think she’s strong. Perhaps because she’s quiet and cold and doesn’t allow herself to be told what to do. But again, she’s not so much strong as she is cowardly.

Time and again she fools the people around her, makes promises she isn’t willing to keep, invokes God’s name into the whole business by asking for signs and then simply interpreting events to her immediate advantage, and then disappears like a fart in the wind. Literally. She creates a distasteful smell and then pulls a David Copperfield and exits stage left never to be seen by that particular cast and crew again.

We meet Rose as a young, unattached woman looking for a husband and asking God for a sign. She mistskes physical desire for a sign and marries a man who loves her. Three years pass and she finds herself pregnant. Horrified, she writes her husband a brief, cold note and crosses the country to take up residence in a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Several months pass during which time she is still planning to give up the baby. 

Then she has a moment of doubt and in the space of twelve hours decides she’ll keep the baby after all and in order to facilitate that she marries a second man who loves her, that she does not love or even care about, after once again asking God for a sign. 

She stays on as an unpaid full-time cook in the home for unwed mothers where her new husband is the caretaker/handyman.

It doesn’t take much time before her moment of desire for her child passes. By the time the girl is 10 she’s moved out on her and her second husband with a thirty second good-bye and no explanation. She stays on the same property with them but lives in a different home, does not function as a wife, and bares only a passing resemblance to a mother.

All this time she remains the primary object of desire for her daughter and object of loyalty for husband and secondary characters. Everyone is just so TAKEN with her. They love her so much. They want her so much. They forgive her nearly everthing.

I believe that we, the kind and gentle readers, are expected to undergo a shift in what we feel for her. The first third of the book is told from her perspective and she’s clearly sympathetic. Who’s never asked God for something with yearning? Who’s never felt trapped in a relationship we didn’t want as much as the other person? Who can’t relate to the fears and anxieties around being pregnant when you don’t want a child? And who can’t feel for a young woman putting a baby up for adoption?

But the second third of the book is told from Son’s perspective. And he deserved much more than to marry a woman who didn’t love him and didn’t want to make him happy despite the fact that he took on her daughter and raised her as his own and never questioned her about her past. He deserved, at the very least, gratitude and kind treatment and respect. He was a good man and he warranted all of that.

And the last third of the book is told from Cecilia’s perspective, the daughter, at 15, who is left hating and loving and yearning for a mother who gives ice a run for its money. For heavens sake if you don’t want to raise a child don’t do so. To keep one due to a momentary lack of courage requires a concomitant commitment to stay that course. Cecilia deserved a mother who could.

In the end Rose’s first husband learns where she is and writes to tell her he is going to visit. He has something to tell her. What he wants to tell her in person is that her mother, whom she has been sending postcards without return addresses to all these years, has died. 

Rose, in modern parlance, “can’t deal.” She doesn’t want to face her first husband, to whom she is (also) still married, so in a matter of a few hours decides to pull another vanishing act, knowing that her first husband will be arriving in a matter of days and will stumble across his own daughter and her second husband, who, because of her basic lack of courage, are not forewarned.

The people in Rose’s life are good people. They handle the situation with resounding aplomb and by their grace her own lack of courage is shown in even starker relief.

Yet never does Patchett break down and fault Rose. The story plays out. Her family faces her absence. Her family faces each other in her absence. And Rose’s greatest punishment is her loss of these good people, although to her that is not even a punishment as she doesn’t appreciate a single one of them.

The lesson of this book is that staying in a situation and marking time is not good enough and leaving people who love you is rarely the answer. Life requires courage. Rose was mysterious but by no means was she courageous.

It’s a nuanced and heart-wrenching story told with skill and art. A book that will make you wonder where it’s been all your life and what the hell the author is working on now.