As it turns out, writing nonfiction stories is not very different from writing fiction for Ann Patchett. The title essay for this collection describes how she puts together an understanding of the life of the stranger who comes to stay in her house during the first months of the COVID-19 lockdown. By her own admission, the story that she has told in all of her novels is “a group of strangers are flung together by a catastrophe of some sort.” She shares her real-life version of that story in this book, using the same engrossing, warmhearted style of her novels.
These Precious Days: Essays. Ann Patchett. Harper, 2021, p. 239.