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The bright side of life becomes suddenly darker in the bestselling author’s intimate, ever-elegant new collection of essaysTowards the end of her new essay collection, Ann Patchett describes being inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where a portrait of her now hangs alongside the likes of Henry James, John Dos Passos and Eudora Welty. “The picture I’d chosen to send was joyful,” she writes. “I’m showing all my teeth and am completely out of step with every serious and circumspect photograph surrounding me.”At first brush, These Precious Days seems a similarly incongruous addition to the sizeable stack of recently published essays by female writers. Though not devoid of joy, titles such as Lavinia Greenlaw’s Some Answers Without Questions or Lucy Ellmann’s Things Are Against Us are unabashed polemics; they grapple with the gritty, they rail and they fulminate. Patchett’s, in contrast, is characterised by sun-dappled beneficence. Continue reading...