By  Laura Nawrot, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main Branch

This story, told from three different perspectives through the voices of Rose, Son, and Sissy, asks as many questions of the reader as it answers. Is Rose running from her destiny, or to it? If you were in Sissy’s shoes, (or Rose’s or Son’s), would you make the same choices? Is there a path that each individual is designed to follow? Do we forge our life’s path through free will alone or by the choices we make? Or is it some combination of both?

Rose, a devout Catholic girl, believes that her two life choices in the mid-sixties are to become a wife or a nun, and that God will provide her with a sign at the appropriate time. It is immediately apparent that Rose believes she misunderstood the sign, for the story opens with Rose driving across the country, alone, three years into a marriage she entered at age nineteen. The narrative quickly unfolds, and the questions rise through Ann Patchett’s wonderful writing. She paints her characters with such depth and compassion that they become a part of the reader, and the reader truly shares their world. Patchett’s portraits and her vivid description work together to make this a book to read more than once.

The Patron Saint of Liars is Ann Patchett’s first novel and was made into a television movie in 1998. She has since written several more novels and most recently a work of non-fiction, Truth & Beauty, about women and friendships that endure beyond a lifetime.