Ann Patchett is the Patron Saint of Subtle Suspense

Ann Patchett’s writing is a masterclass in evoking emotional depth from everyday occurrences. Her narrative often reveals more about the characters’ lives than they themselves know, taking readers on an emotional rollercoaster that resonates deeply.

“The Patron Saint of Liars” is no different. In 1968, before Roe v. Wade, Rose found herself pregnant and married to a man she did not love. She drives from California to Kentucky, where a Catholic home for unwed mothers cares for its inhabitants until they give birth; the mothers give the children up for adoption and continue their lives as if nothing happened.

During her pregnancy, Rose intends to leave her baby and move on. However, she marries the maintenance man, Son, when she decides to keep her baby. She becomes the home’s cook, setting off a series of events that puts her past in California on a collision course with her reality in Kentucky.

The book centers around Rose’s apparent lack of emotional acuity toward her daughter, Cecilia, and Cecilia’s curiosity about her mother. Although Rose keeps her baby, she can’t care for her in the usual sense that a mother cares for her child. As Cecilia grows up surrounded by mothers who will inevitably leave her, it seems fitting that her biological mother, too, is as temporary as her surrogates.

In “The Patron Saint of Liars,” Patchett seems to intimate that there is no such thing as a mother’s intuition or that motherhood itself is instinctual. As the title suggests, Rose builds herself a “house of cards” around Cecilia’s history. If one card falls out of place, the whole thing will, of course, collapse.

With a flair for subtext, Patchett crafts a cast of characters, each with unique insights into the truth—specifically, Cecilia’s truth. A particularly poignant moment occurs toward the novel’s end, when Cecilia, Son, Sister Evangeline, and Thomas Clinton gather around the dining room table, the air thick with awkwardness. In this pivotal scene, the reader realizes that the two characters withholding a crucial truth from the others might just be the Patron Saint of Liars.