the patron saint of liars by ann patchett

I did try to write an inter-connected collection of short stories before that, but I was unhappy with the way it turned out and threw it away. It feels a little bit like walking away from a car crash, all of life and all of death in a minute.ĬM: Were there any finished – or unfinished, for that matter – novels before The Patron Saint of Liars? What had you published before submitting it?ĪP: Patron Saint was the first novel I wrote. It still does feel like it did with Patron Saint, that moment of typing a last line, stumbling away from the computer. Right now my editor has the book, but I think it’s finished.

It’s done when I can’t make changes anymore. I suppose a book is done when it is typeset, or maybe after that. Then I go back and re-write the end several times, then I start to re-read and change things, then I send it to Elizabeth McCracken and add in her changes, then my agent, then my editor, who may or may not want changes. Congratulations! How do you look at the finishing of a book? Do you feel differently now about the end of a novel than you did the first time, with The Patron Saint of Liars?Īnn Patchett: There are so many steps in finishing a book. Patchett lives in Nashville, Tennessee.Ĭandace Moonshower: When we began the interview process, you mentioned that you have just completed your latest novel. Taft won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Patron Saint was also chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, was the only first novel chosen in 1992 by the American Library Association’s Notable Books Council as one of the best works of fiction of the year. She has written for various magazines including Seventeen, Elle, GQ, The Paris Review and Vogue. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and was a Bunting Institute fellow at Radcliffe. Patchett’s writing has kept me reading ever since.Īnn Patchett was born in 1963. This tenuous link made me curious to read Patchett’s first novel.

But, hey! We both waited tables at Friday’s! And I’d enjoyed many a happy hour or late-night drink with friends at the Nashville Friday’s in the early ’80s.

I, too, had waited tables at Friday’s, though not in Nashville. Friday’s restaurant on Elliston Place in Nashville, Tennessee. I felt a kinship with Ann Patchett early on in her career when I read somewhere (after the success of The Patron Saint of Liars) that she had waited tables at the T.G.I.

The patron saint of liars by ann patchett