'In my novels, there is more kindness than you might see in other books': Author Ann Patchett on writing amid chaos
Christopher Luu
Natassja Ebert
(Credit: Natassja Ebert)
In the latest episode of Influential, US writer Ann Patchett shares how seeing kindness around her influences the way she approaches her characters.
The world needs "life-changing books", Ann Patchett once wrote in an essay in The New York Times. She wasn't referring to her own works, yet admirers of the best-selling US author would argue that this is exactly what she has achieved, with acclaimed novels including Bel Canto, and the Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted The Dutch House, along with her award-winning 2005 memoir, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship.
Patchett, who cites John Updike and Roxane Gay as influences on her deep body of work, brushes off praise. Reflecting on her books, she says that it took her years to finally feel like she was a successful writer, even when The New York Times included the prize-winning 2001 novel Bel Canto in its best books of the 21st Century list.
"I just didn't think you could make art and be successful," she tells the BBC's Katty Kay. They sat down at Parnassus Books, the bookshop Patchett she opened in 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, a city which is also the setting for her 1992 novel The Patron Saint of Liars and her 2013 memoir-fiction hybrid, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. "[It] never occurred to me."
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