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Literary Fiction · Free kit

Whistler

Ann Patchett

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, fifty-three-year-old English teacher Daphne Fuller reunites with Eddie Triplett — the stepfather who vanished from her life when she was nine. What follows is a luminous novel about memory, chosen family, the stories that keep us alive, and the love that can survive decades of misunderstanding.

“It’s a story about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.”

Complete free book club kit

Whistler Icebreakers

Answer in under 30 seconds. These connect to the book’s themes without spoiling the story.

  1. Personality Reveal

    1. Are you someone who keeps old chapters sealed, or someone who goes looking for people from your past?

  2. Personality Reveal

    2. When family stories don’t add up, do you push for the truth or decide some mysteries are safer left alone?

  3. Personality Reveal

    3. In a crisis, are you the person who stays in the room — or the person who finds a practical task somewhere else?

  4. Funny & Light

    4. What’s a nickname from childhood you’d rather never hear again in public?

  5. Funny & Light

    5. What’s the most dramatic way you’ve ever run into someone you weren’t prepared to see?

  6. Funny & Light

    6. What’s one object you’ve kept for years that would make zero sense to anyone else?

  7. Would You Rather

    7. Would you rather know the full truth about a painful family decision, or keep the kinder story you’ve always believed?

  8. Would You Rather

    8. Would you rather be deeply known by one person for a short time, or comfortably liked by many people forever?

  9. Would You Rather

    9. Would you rather face a hard goodbye with honesty, or stretch a relationship past the point where either of you can speak plainly?

  10. Hot Take

    10. Hot take: some divorces are acts of clarity, not failure. Agree or disagree?

  11. Hot Take

    11. Finish this sentence: “The older I get, the more I believe that memory is ______.”

  12. Hot Take

    12. Hot take: chosen family can matter as much as blood family. Always true, sometimes true, or rarely true?

  13. Personal Connection

    13. Who is one person who shaped you deeply in a short window of time?

  14. Personal Connection

    14. What’s one story from your childhood that you’ve revised as an adult?

  15. Personal Connection

    15. What’s one way you show love that other people sometimes misunderstand?