I got the Audible’s version of this book and, in my opinion, it was the perfect way to go about it. The warmth of the story in the voice of Tom Hanks gave the whole experience a sense of familiarity, like a friend telling you the stories of their childhood.
It’s funny how Patchett manages to capture and entrail the reader into the narrative that is, as the title says, basically about a house. And that is the magic of it, to take a book about some walls and decor and make it so much more than that: An ode to family, the memories we keep throughout the years, the bonds we create with the ones around us, how they can change and mold us, the feelings brought in by others, the moments that scar/mark us, those treasures that can’t be monetized.
There’s also the aspect of memories as they are, that even if we try to collect and treasure them as we experienced them, most common than not we’re not storing the whole story but just a snipet of a life.
I loved this story so much and it is maybe because I can’t completely relate, we moved around so much when I was little that my memories were packed and repacked constantly, which is not necessarily a bad thing but there’s no sense of attachment to a place, my childhood memories are more about WHAT I lived and WHOM I lived them with than about WHERE they happened. The book made me think about how so many stories get lost because of a lack of interest and time. How nice it feels to just share random stories of the past with that coworker next to me, to have a good laugh or a necessary moment of solemnity for the ones that have parted. Stories are ties that bind us together.
I had written in my Bookstagram account that this was my first book by Patchett but then I remembered reading Commonwealth a while back, how funny that we can inadvertantly lie and be so convinced about it. Anyway, first or second, it certaintly won’t be my last, I have State of Wonder and Bel Canto lined up.