“I bought maps in every town”
In Ann Patchett’s first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, Rose Clinton loves to drive. Although she “bought maps in every town,” Rose says, “I was never interested in where I might go, only the contours of the roads, the kind of lines they made, their shape and width, the views I imagined they would afford me.”
The bend in the road on I-40, somewhere between Nashville and Memphis (in the novel, Rose spends a lot of time on Highway 40)
In October, when I visited Nashville briefly, before and after my visit with my sister and her family in Oxford, Mississippi, I bought a copy of the novel at the bookstore Patchett owns, Parnassus Books.
Cumberland River
Tennessee State Capitol and Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park
Honky Tonk Highway
The Hermitage Hotel
Rose says, “People think you have to be going someplace, when, in fact, the ride is plenty.”
I enjoyed reading The Patron Saint of Liars on the flight home to Nova Scotia.
Thanks to all of you for reading my blog this year, and especially for celebrating Sense and Sensibility and L.M. Montgomery’s 150th birthday with me. I’m going to take some time off, and I’ll be back with a new post later in January. Best wishes to all of you for a wonderful new year, and for whatever lies beyond the bend in the road.
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up!
Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:
“The bells rang back through the woods” (Christmas in L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon)
“She placed her bonnet on his head & ran away” (my essay from the 2024 JASNA AGM, published in Persuasions On-Line)
Read more about my books, including St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues, and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.
Copyright Sarah Emsley 2024 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.
