The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is one of those writers who can make me fall into her words, and forget that I am reading a book in my room or the metro. Instead, I find myself standing next to Rose--the stormy engimatic protagnist of The Patron Saint of Liars --peering inside her head, listening to her thoughts, watching her story enfold.

I love a good story. And the Patron Saint of Liars is nothing, if not a good story. The novel opens in a small town named Habit in the early 1900s, with a miracle that eventually leads to Saint Elizabeth's--a halfway house for unwed mothers, a place "where women had babies and left them behind, like pieces of furniture too heavy to move". In the 1960s, this is where Rose flees to when she finds out she is pregnant, and realizes she has married a good man who she does not love, and whose life she destroys by leaving.

For a book brimming with unwanted pregnancies, it is perhaps a little surprising to note that abortion is barely mentioned in the story. None of her characters brood over terminating a pregnancy (except on one instance when someone says she couldn't go through with one--an afterthought). All of them, however, forge excruciatingly painful attachments with their unborn children. Thoughtfully and carefully, as if she is teasing a wound open, Patchett explores the trauma and quiet grief of giving up your child at the end of the nine months. It is difficult to not see the point lurking somewhere that giving your child up for adoption might not always be the best option. But Patchett really isn't interested in making this point, or contributing in any way to abortion debates.

Instead, at the heart of this beautifully written novel are the bonds that form among women who become each others' sisters, mothers, and friends. I know that sounds like a lifetime movie--in fact I think they did churn one out (yes, the book is better than this crappy movie).

Patchett has added mystery and enigma to motherhood--and written a love story about mothers and daughters. Like Bel Canto, Patchett's novels find their greatest strength in weaving together characters whose inner lives are always rich, devastating and extraordinary. Characters who you want to get to know, and who stay with you long after you come up from reading