These Precious Days

Critics Review

• Ann Patchett is one of my favourite novelists … A pitch-perfect collection … She writes about family, writing, life, love, death and the peculiar experience of lockdown with such unshowy brilliance. She can turn a sentence like no one else: her writing is clear, honest, witty, and just full of unsentimental humanity.

  NIGELLA LAWSON

• Patchett’s essays are both sharp and humane … like a hugely enjoyable conversation with a particularly brilliant friend

  SADIE JONES

• I am counting down to the release of These Precious Days. I adore everything she writes but especially her essays, which are always profound and clever, and funny and wise

  MEG MASON

• All of life – friendship, love, loss, fertility, grief, gratitude, success and failure – is contained in These Precious Days

  Harper's Bazaar

• Patchett’s gift is to write from intensely personal territory but to make her insights – about the importance of being generous in our relationships, or the fine balance between optimism and grief – seem universally relevant. As you read these meditative but warm-hearted essays, you begin to understand what matters most – not just to Patchett, but to you

  Financial Times

• These Precious Days … is so full of heart that it practically throbs in your hands … The whole volume is a delight: a celebration of friendship and generosity and the flare of those unexpected coincidences which light a life

  Spectator, Books of the Year

• It’s radiant storytelling, both questing and vulnerable in its candour … It confronts, too, the extent to which literature and life diverge … Timely, timeless and as full-voiced as her smile is broad

  Observer

• Exquisite … Powerful but unassuming … in These Precious Days, her first nonfiction work in eight years, Patchett turns the lens back not just on herself but on the relationships she’s forged throughout her career as a writer too, in essays that vary in length but seamlessly balance Patchett’s piercing emotional and intellectual insights with a welcoming charm … It’s an unforgettable portrait of love, loss, and the wonders of friendship that will leave you both devastated and dazzled

  Vogue, The Best Books to Read in 2021

• To immerse oneself in her book is to see the world as she does, in all its wonder and beauty. Read it, cherish it, buy a copy for your best friend, then read it once more

  i Paper

• Patchett’s latest stands out from the crowd. Reflecting on fiction, family life and her recent career as a bookseller in Nashville, it’s illuminating and often surprising … A book to savour

  Metro

• Fantastic … The tales she shares are personal, the truths they reflect are universal

  Good Housekeeping

• Gave me such joy and comfort that I couldn’t shelve it when I had finished; I wanted to keep it there so I could re-read a page in empty moments

  i paper, Christmas 2021: Best Books of the Year

• A book for our times … Following almost two years in which, for many of us, death has come too close for comfort, Patchett takes us by the hand and shows us what makes a life

  Lunate.co.uk

• Rich and vibrant

  Red

• Life-affirming

  Vogue