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BBC News
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'In my novels, there is more kindness than you might see in other books': Author Ann Patchett on writing amid chaos
In the latest episode of Influential, US writer Ann Patchett shares how seeing kindness around her influences the way she approaches her characters. The world needs "life-changing books", Ann Patchett once wrote in an essay in The New York Times. She wasn't referring to her own works, yet admirers of the best-selling US author would argue that this is exactly what she has achieved, with acclaimed novels including Bel Canto, and the Pulitzer Prize-shortlisted The Dutch House, along with her award-winning 2005 memoir, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett, who cites John Updike and Roxane Gay as influences on her deep body of work, brushes off praise. Reflecting on her books, she says that it took her years to finally feel like she was a successful writer, even when The New York Times included the prize-winning 2001 novel Bel Canto in its best books of the 21st Century list. "I just didn't think you could make art and be successful," she tells the BBC's Katty Kay. They sat down at Parnassus Books, the bookshop Patchett she opened in 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, a city which is also the setting for her 1992 novel The Patron Saint of Liars and her 2013 memoir-fiction hybrid, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. "[It] never occurred to me." Some may see an author opening a bookshop as self-serving, but Patchett explains that she approached it like a civic duty. She didn't want to live in a city without one, and after she saw her local bookshops shutting, she co-founded her own. "It wasn't that I wanted to open a bookstore – I really fell into it backwards," she says. "It's been a wonderful thing. It's been a huge joy." Patchett rose to prominence in the world of fiction, crafting stories that brought together unexpected situations, and even more unexpected characters. Take, for instance, the home for unwed mothers in The Patron Saint of Liars or the depths of the Amazon rainforest in 2011's State of Wonder. She describes the scenarios in her books as "people in confinement", even though the stories span everything from events on a meditation retreat to hostage situations – and her own memoirs. "The setting is the fun," she says of that commonality, though she's quick to point out that there's always something deeper going on. Readers have been transported to Alpine peaks, the jungles of South America, the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago – but Patchett points out that within those far-flung places, it's first and foremost the characters that she hopes fans connect with. "The setting is the frosting, but it is always the relationships." More like this: • Misty Copeland is 'not scared' to face a career beyond dance • Ina Garten on her internet appeal: 'Young people don't have mom in the kitchen' • Entrepreneur Jane Wurwand on why 'high-touch will overshadow high-tech' in business Patchett has said before she doesn't watch television and that she has resisted the siren song of social media. "I am very interested in protecting my brain and not just being constantly interrupted," she tells Kay. She uses a flip phone, she doesn't remember her number and she avoids both smartphones and social media. "I've never texted. That seems like a really bad idea. I don't want people to be able to get me all the time." She may not participate, but she is aware of the digital world – and it does make its way into her work. When Kay asks her how she captures readers' attention when they all have feeds to scroll, Patchett doesn't see this as an issue. "There are always going to be people who want to read," she says. "There isn't one truth about the way people are, how they get their entertainment, how they get their education." Reflecting on the characters in her books, Patchett explains that she is more drawn to kindness than anything else. When she looks at everything happening around her, she doesn't just see chaos and doom. "In my novels, there probably is more kindness than you might see in other books, but not more kindness than you might see in your daily life," she says. When Commonwealth, her seventh novel, was published in 2016, she spoke to fellow writer Zadie Smith, who offered an insight that Patchett had never considered. "'Autobiographical fiction isn't what has happened to us. It's what we're afraid of happening. It's what we fixate on and think about and worry about,'" Patchett recalls Smith saying. "In that moment, I thought, what am I afraid of? Who am I afraid of being? What do I think about all the time?" Addressing those questions head-on has allowed Patchett to craft characters that have resonated with readers. She says that her fans bring her first-edition hardcover copies of Bel Canto at festivals (she's quick to remind everyone that every hardcover of Bel Canto is a first edition), and tell her that she's managed to create something very special with every book. As ever, she downplays such praise. "I do it because I love to do it, I don't feel any pressure," she says. "If I never wrote a book again, the world would keep going just fine." Influential with Katty Kay airs on Fridays at 21:30 ET on the BBC News channel. -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
South China Morning Post
18-02-2025
- South China Morning Post
An 18th century Dutch house in Sri Lanka is reborn
In the summer of 2004, Peter Harris, president of Pedder Group – a division of Hong Kong's Lane Crawford Joyce Group – visited Sri Lanka for the first time. He travelled for hours in darkness from Colombo down to Galle to stay at what was then called The Dutch House. It had been built by a retired Dutch admiral in the early 18th century and was run by Australian boutique-hotelier Geoffrey Dobbs. When Harris woke, he felt, as travellers often have in the Land of Serendip, that he'd landed in paradise. A pattern began: every Christmas he would take his Australian family – his mother, two sisters, his nieces and nephew – to the house and he'd feel the urge for permanence and look around for his own place. He estimates he saw almost 30 possibilities. Nowhere matched up. Advertisement Then, in January 2021, during Covid-19, he received a one-line email from Dobbs asking if he'd be interested in taking over the property's lease. In May 2021, after almost 30 years in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he left Pedder Group. By August, having completed quarantine, he was living in one room while restoration – not renovation, he insists – took place around him. Doornberg in Galle, Sri Lanka. Photo: Sebastian Posingis 'I wanted to live a modern life respecting the structure of a very old house,' he says on a recent morning in an acre of garden vibrant with the sights and sounds of magnificent birds. (The road between Galle and Colombo has warning signs: 'Danger Peacocks Ahead'.) The 10,000 sq ft house has reverted to its original name, which, along with its original construction date, is incised into the step at the entrance: Doornberg 1712. Work took a year. The last major overhaul had been sensitively carried out in 2002 by architect Channa Daswatte, a pupil of Sri Lanka's master of Tropical Modernism, Geoffrey Bawa . Previously, Doornberg had been the site, in 1814, of the first Wesleyan Methodist school in Asia – 'a very retired and romantic spot', reported the missionaries – and later became a small orphanage. (By a quirk of colonial history, it is still owned by the Church of England.) On a hilltop overlooking the sea it had, as the artist and designer Barbara Sansoni wrote in 1998's The Architecture of an Island, 'the lovely sweep of roof and minimum four pillars of the best Ceylon Dutch houses'. The library. Photo: Sebastian Posingis It was built in an L-shape and Daswatte added a wing behind the main house. This gave the property an elegant balance: the deep, covered veranda on three sides acts as a clasp around a perfectly proportioned rose apple tree. But both house and tree had fallen into decline. Harris set out on a revival mission.
South China Morning Post
18-02-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
How an 18th century Dutch house was restored by an ex-Hong Kong resident
Published: 1:12pm, 18 Feb 2025 In the summer of 2004, Peter Harris, president of Pedder Group – a division of Hong Kong's Lane Crawford Joyce Group – visited Sri Lanka for the first time. He travelled for hours in darkness from Colombo down to Galle to stay at what was then called The Dutch House. It had been built by a retired Dutch admiral in the early 18th century and was run by Australian boutique-hotelier Geoffrey Dobbs. When Harris woke, he felt, as travellers often have in the Land of Serendip, that he'd landed in paradise. A pattern began: every Christmas he would take his Australian family – his mother, two sisters, his nieces and nephew – to the house and he'd feel the urge for permanence and look around for his own place. He estimates he saw almost 30 possibilities. Nowhere matched up. Then, in January 2021, during Covid-19, he received a one-line email from Dobbs asking if he'd be interested in taking over the property's lease. In May 2021, after almost 30 years in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he left Pedder Group. By August, having completed quarantine, he was living in one room while restoration – not renovation, he insists – took place around him. Doornberg in Galle, Sri Lanka. Photo: Sebastian Posingis 'I wanted to live a modern life respecting the structure of a very old house,' he says on a recent morning in an acre of garden vibrant with the sights and sounds of magnificent birds. (The road between Galle and Colombo has warning signs: 'Danger Peacocks Ahead'.) The 10,000 sq ft house has reverted to its original name, which, along with its original construction date, is incised into the step at the entrance: Doornberg 1712. Work took a year. The last major overhaul had been sensitively carried out in 2002 by architect Channa Daswatte, a pupil of Sri Lanka's master of Tropical Modernism, Geoffrey Bawa . Previously, Doornberg had been the site, in 1814, of the first Wesleyan Methodist school in Asia – 'a very retired and romantic spot', reported the missionaries – and later became a small orphanage. (By a quirk of colonial history, it is still owned by the Church of England.) On a hilltop overlooking the sea it had, as the artist and designer Barbara Sansoni wrote in 1998's The Architecture of an Island, 'the lovely sweep of roof and minimum four pillars of the best Ceylon Dutch houses'. The library. Photo: Sebastian Posingis It was built in an L-shape and Daswatte added a wing behind the main house. This gave the property an elegant balance: the deep, covered veranda on three sides acts as a clasp around a perfectly proportioned rose apple tree. But both house and tree had fallen into decline. Harris set out on a revival mission.
