Product Description

St. Elizabeth's is a home for unwed mothers in the 1960s. Life there is not unpleasant, and for most, it is temporary. Not so for Rose, a beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to the home pregnant but not unwed. She plans to give up her baby because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth's is near a healing spring, and when Rose's time draws near, she cannot go through with her plans, not all of them. And she cannot remain forever untouched by what she has left behind . . . and who she has become in the leaving.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47976 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Released on: 2007-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Library Journal
Unanticipated pregnancy makes liars out of young women, this thoughtful first novel shows, as they try to rationalize, explain, and accept what is happening to them. When she arrives at St. Elizabeth's, a home for pregnant girls in Habit, Kentucky, Rose Clinton seems as evasive and deceptive as the other unwed mothers. But Rose is different: she has a husband whom she has deserted. Unlike most St. Elizabeth's visitors, she neither gives up her baby nor leaves the home, staying on as cook while her daughter grows up among expectant mothers fantasizing that they, too, might keep their infants. The reader learns from Rose how she came to St. Elizabeth's, but it is her doting husband and rebellious daughter who reveal her motives and helpless need for freedom. Together, the three create a complex character study of a woman driven by forces she can neither understand nor control.
- Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Patchett's first novel, set in rural Kentucky in a castle-like home for unwed mothers--where a good woman finds she cannot lie her way beyond love--has a quiet summer-morning sensibility that reminds one of the early work of Anne Tyler. Within the security of everydayness, minds and hearts take grievous risks. ``Maybe I was born to lie,'' thinks Rose, who, after a three- year marriage to nice Tom Clinton, realizes that she's misread the sign from God pointing to the wedding: she married a man she didn't love. From San Diego, then, Rose drives--``nothing behind me and nothing ahead of me''--all the way to Kentucky and St. Elizabeth's home for unwed mothers, where she plans to have the baby Tom will never know about, and to give it clean away. But in the home, once a grand hotel, Rose keeps her baby, Cecilia; marries ``Son,'' the handyman (``God was right after all...I was supposed to live a small life with a man I didn't love''); and becomes the cook after briefly assisting that terrible cook, sage/seeress, and font of love, Sister Evangeline. The next narrative belongs to Son, a huge man originally from Tennessee--like Rose, gone forever from home- -who recounts the last moments of his fianc‚e's life long ago (Sister Evangeline absolves him of responsibility) and who loves Rose. The last narrator is teenaged Cecilia, struggling to find her elusive mother within the competent Rose, who's moved into her own house away from husband and daughter. Like Rose years before, her daughter considers the benefits of not knowing ``what was going on''...as the recent visitor--small, sad Tom Clinton--drives off, and Cecilia knows that Rose, who left before he came, will never return. In an assured, warm, and graceful style, a moving novel that touches on the healing powers of chance sanctuaries of love and fancy in the acrid realities of living. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
Ann Patchett won the 2002 Orange Prize with the magical Bel Canto, but she was a successful novelist long before that, as this reissue of her first book proves. An elegant and intelligent novel, it's set in a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers, but St Elizabeth's in Kentucky is not as horrendous and brutal a place as those we have encountered before. Rose Clinton has abandoned both her unexciting marriage and her loving mother to flee to the home, planning to give up the child she is unhappy about having. But soon the effect of the home (and its healing spring) begins to change her decisions. Rose has to take into consideration not just the family she has walked away from, but also those she has encountered at St Elizabeth's, such as the enigmatic Sister Evangeline and the odd-job man at the home. What makes Patchett's book work so well is her confounding of the expectations the setting engenders. From Iris Murdoch onwards, we have come to anticipate that religious retreats will be places of repressed emotion and thwarted lives, but that is not the case here. Some may find that its conclusions are a touch too luminous, but there is no denying Patchett's complex and believable characterization, not to mention the assured plotting that makes this an extremely compelling read. (Kirkus UK)

Customer Reviews

Lovely and lyrical
This is Patchett's first novel, and she's gotten better and better. If I hadn't read Bel Canto before this one, I'd have awarded 5 stars.
Divided into 3 parts, the book spans the lives of its three main characters: Rose, a woman with 'issues' who has trouble attaching to people but tries to do her job in life as well as she's able. Son, Rose's 2nd husband, is a giant of a man who is damaged by a tragedy and finds a place for himself as handyman in a 60's home for unwed mothers. And Cecelia, named after a tattoo on Son's arm of his first love, damaged by her weird upbringing but a complete person nonetheless, thanks to the mothering of the 'saint' in the story,, a clairvoyant nun who mothers them all.
I loved this book.

filled with pain, but full of grace
"The Patron Saint of Liars" is the debut novel of author Ann Patchett. Patchett has also written the extraordinary "Bel Canto." This novel, originally published in 1992 was the announcement of a major new talent in literature. The story she tells is a simple one, but filled with grace and written with skill. In the 1960's, pregnant, Rose Clinton leaves her husband in California with nothing but a note saying that she is unhappy and that he should not try to find her. She has no intention of coming home. Her destination is in Kentucky: St. Elizabeth's home for unwed mothers. It is where women from all over go to give birth and give up their children. It is a Catholic home in a Baptist town. Rose does not believe that she can be a good mother to her child and that she shouldn't be a mother. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

The novel is told in three sections. The first section is told from the perspective of Rose. Through her eyes and with her words we learn about why she left California, how she ended up at St. Elizabeth's and what that experience was like. Patchett writes Rose so well that when her section ended I couldn't imagine that the next section of the novel could possibly be as good as what it was that I just read. Section two is told by Rose's husband. The final section of the novel is given to Rose's daughter. "The Patron Saint of Liars" is a remarkable novel. It is filled with insight into the characters and it seems at times also into our own lives. This isn't a story of faith, but it is also filled with a sense of grace and healing at all turns, even when the characters are facing personal difficulties.

With "Bel Canto" I knew that Ann Patchett was a talented author and I wanted to experience her other novels. After "The Patron Saint of Liars" it is clear that Patchett ranks among my favorite authors. She doesn't slam the reader with hard hitting slamming dialogue, but rather allows that sense of grace and healing which is so much a theme of the novel come out in nearly every sentence. As a first novel this is even more remarkable as accomplished authors would be fortunate to write a novel as beautiful as this. I would give "The Patron Saint of Liars" my highest recommendation.

-Joe Sherry

A bold tale, with no compromises
Patchett takes the reader through the painfully honest, searingly personal account of how the life of Rose--an interminable escapist--impacts the lives of those around her.

The novel draws its strength in part from Patchett's ability to tell her story from multiple perspectives: a single mom, daughter and second husband. Each point-of-view feels as fresh and true-to-character as the last.

If you're looking for a tidy, happy fairy tale ending, look elsewhere. Patchett's characters will make you love them, hate them, and think deeply about your own relationships and secrets--very much a must read.