Over the past 33 years, Ann Patchett has published nine novels at a fairly regular cadence (2-4 years in between books). I can trace my interest in Patchett’s books to a 2019 post on the blog Cup of Jo about the book The Dutch House. After reading that post, I promptly got on the library waitlist (it was very long), got off of it, and then never read the book. In fact, five years went by before I read a book by Ann Patchett.

In September 2024, I randomly read Bel Canto and was completely enthralled. I considered reading her other books but none sounded as amazing as Bel Canto, so I took a few months off. In January 2025, I read Tom Lake and was once again enthralled. Over the subsequent three months, I read the rest of her novels.

I think one reason I took so long to pick up one of her books was because all of her plots sound pretty cliché. “Woman tells her daughters about her past relationship with a famous movie star, right before he became famous.” Eh. That sounds kind of annoying. But that’s Tom Lake, which though slightly cloying at times, is amazing and one of the only books set explicitly during the Covid pandemic that I haven’t found horribly cringe. Okay, here’s another – “Leftist revolutionaries take a house party hostage.” That sounds terrible, and thrillers aren’t my thing. But that’s Bel Canto, not a thriller but a magnificent book about creating your own realities. The plots are rather cliché on their faces. But Patchett’s writing and the characters go deep, and when I start a book, the plot quickly ceases to feel cliché to me.

Diving into the books

At the beginning of a Patchett book, there is one character. You get that one character’s backstory and life history up until a point, and at that point the character meets another character and stuff happens in the present, and but then you get the second character’s backstory and that changes how you perceive the second character’s present actions, and their relationship with the first character. And so on and so forth, more characters, more connections, more backstories, more present actions until it’s all wound together and you don’t know how it could possibly be sorted out satisfactorily and then bang! it is! All of her books have surprising twists, but the twists are about someone’s relationship to another character or someone’s identify or motive. They are twists that don’t always change the trajectory of the plot, but more change how you as a reader view the events of the book.

I love this type of book. I always want to hear about how some character’s father stole something and lied about it in Ireland fifty years before the main action of the book, and how that event continues to affect present-day characters. I love a good flashback. I’d compare Patchett’s books to Min Jin Lee’s books Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko. Patchett and Lee both write richly compelling portraits of how a family lives and changes over time, usually over generations.

Below are all of Patchett’s novels, ranked according to my own personal preference.

1: Bel Canto (2001)

Japanese business man Katsumi Hosokawa agrees to attend a party in an unnamed South American country only because the opera singer he’s obsessed with will be there. During the birthday party, leftist revolutionaries take everyone hostage.

This book has the plot of a thriller, but it’s not a thriller at all. This is one of my favorite books of all time.

2: Tom Lake (2023)

Lara lives and works on a cherry farm with her husband. It’s 2020, and her three adult daughters are back home at the farm. Lara tells her daughters the summer when she acted in the play Our Town alongside a famous movie star, right before he became famous.

This is perhaps the only book set during the 2020 pandemic that I like. One of the only multiple timeline books I like. Though, I reread Tom Lake and found the pandemic bits just a little bit cloying. Overall, I still really like this book.

3: State of Wonder (2011)

A pharmacologist is sent to the Amazon to recover the dead body of her former labmate and report on the status of a fertility drug another researcher is developing. Parts of this could be classified as magical realism or even science fiction.

I loved this book, especially the main character Marina. There were decisions that certain characters made that I didn’t like, but it was because I cared so much about the characters. Even the parts I didn’t like, I can admit that they really made the book a winner.

4: Run (2007)

Former mayor of Boston Bernard Doyle (white) has two adopted boys, Tip and Teddy (Black), and a long-dead wife Bernadette. (Bernard and Bernardette?? Really?!) A woman the Doyles don’t know saves Teddy from getting hit by a car and ends up in the hospital. Her young daughter Kenya stays with the Doyles.

This was a solid book. All of the strands and character tie together in the end in a very satisfying way. Shout out to the red-haired statue of the Virgin Mary that changes hands many times over the course of the book!

5: The Magician’s Assistant (1997)

Sabine is the widow and former assistant of gay magician Parsifal. When he dies, she meets the family she never knew he had and learns about his childhood in Alliance, Nebraska.

The first third of the book takes place in Los Angeles as Parsifal’s mother and sister visit Sabine. That part really dragged and felt overlong. I actually put the book down for a month before picking it back up. The second two thirds take place in Nebraska – Sabine visits Parsifal’s family and unravels his childhood and how he came to be a magician. That part was marvelous.

6: The Patron Saint of Liars (1992)

Rose, three months pregnant, leaves her husband in Southern California and takes up residence in a home for unmarried mothers in Kentucky.

The first part of the book is told from Rose’s perspective, and the second part of the book is told from her daughter Sissy’s perspective. There are also perspectives from the home’s handyman and from the original owners of the home. I liked this book overall, but found parts and characters frustrating. The ending wasn’t as satisfying as Patchett’s other books.

7: Commonwealth (2016)

Beverly Keating and Bert Cousins have an affair and divorce their respective partners. The book follows their blended family over the course of many decades.

I found it hard to root for any of the characters, and there’s a key plot point involving Benadryl that I found extremely unconvincing. Overall, I didn’t love this book.

8: Taft (1994)

Former drummer John Nickel manages a bar in Memphis and hires Fay Taft, who is definitely over eighteen, as a waitress. John balances his relationship with his former girlfriend and their son, as well his evolving relationships with Fay and her brother Carl. Parts of the story are flashbacks in the perspective of Fay and Carl’s dead father (“Taft”).

The pace was painstakingly slow for most of the book, then switched to a breakneck pace in the last few chapters. I liked parts of the book, but it just felt off overall. There were some far-fetched plot twists and some minor characters seemed like setup for a payoff that never happened. The book alternated perspectives – one third-person perspective, one first-person. That felt uneven. Overall, things didn’t quite hang together for me.

9: The Dutch House (2019)

Siblings Danny and Maeve grow up in an ostentatious mansion in Pennsylvania. The house (“The Dutch House”) is a source of pride, inspiration, and embarrassment to them over the course of their lives. Maeve dreams of Danny becoming a doctor, but Danny would follow in his (distasteful) father’s footsteps and become a landlord.

Danny is, confusingly, the obvious protagonist of the book, but I just couldn’t root for him or find him compelling. His unlikeability doesn’t seem intentional. Maeve is an infinitely more interesting character but is frustratingly only a supporting character to the mediocre Danny. Other interesting characters include Celeste (Danny’s long-suffering wife) and Andrea (Danny and Maeve’s evil stepmother). Like Maeve, these characters are flat and one-dimensional and don’t get the “backstory” treatment that Patchett gives secondary characters in many of her other books.

Charting the books

Ann Patchett’s books are all family sagas of some sort, and share certain similarities. Los Angeles is a recurring location (usually a secondary one); complex sibling relationships feature in almost all of the books. Below is a table charting some of the recurring motifs of the books, mostly because I just love a table.

Book Title Los Angeles Sibling Relationships Mother-Daughter Relationships Father-Son Relationships Interconnectedness of Strangers Unexpected Romantic Relationship
Bel Canto — — — — ✓ ✓
Tom Lake — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
State of Wonder — — — — ✓ —
Run — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ —
The Magician's Assistant ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ —
The Patron Saint of Liars — — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Commonwealth ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ —
Taft — ✓ — ✓ ✓ ✓
The Dutch House — ✓ — ✓ — —