Ann Patchett has a confession. “This is such a hard thing to talk about, but I was very happy during the pandemic,” she says sheepishly. We are chatting via video call, Ann in her Nashville home, a picture of contentment surrounded by soft furnishing. “You don’t wish suffering and death on the world, it’s horrifying, but really my dream scenario is that I would just be locked in my house. I wouldn’t ever have to go out to dinner and I wouldn’t ever have to get on a plane, and the person I would be hanging out with would be my husband. The world would be really small,” she explains.
“I had such a revelation during the pandemic. Everybody I needed to see was in a three-block radius and suddenly the people who are central to my life were the people in my neighbourhood. We would swap groceries and any time anybody went to the store we would say, ‘Do you need anything? I can get you this, I can get you that … ’ It was really lovely for my privileged self.
“I don’t have kids and I wasn’t trying to homeschool anybody
