Claire Nicholls

I imagine having the sister, though, that's a pretty important bond.

That's the stable bond, right?

Well, congratulations.

I think that's more than a lot of families achieve.

I sometimes feel that siblings get locked in whatever they were when they were 13.

You go to your parents' house for dinner and you suddenly revert to being 13 again.

Wow.

So the secret to Ann Patchett, the lovely author famous for being so nice, has just been unlocked.

It was all your sister's doing.

No, it's true.

And listeners won't know because they haven't read Whistler yet, but A Car Accident is a very pivotal part of this novel.

Anne, I want to know a little bit about the process for this book, Whistler, because I've heard before that you really have to have a lot of the details of the story locked in in your head before you will start writing.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the launching pad was for Whistler?

How incredible.

And did you have the details of this book figured out in those five days?

It was a busy time.

You know, this process of kind of percolating it all in your mind before you write it, during that time, are you talking to other people in your life?

Are you telling them the idea?

Are you sounding it out?

So it was a bit of a reunion on the page.