This is a beautiful memoir of a friendship between two writers, Ann Patchett and the poet Lucy Grealy. I read this back in 2006, and it's still one of my favorite books about the nature of friendship and the bonds that we form with others.Ann met Lucy in college, and later they both attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop. As a child, Lucy had suffered cancer of the jaw and her face was disfigured during numerous reconstruction surgeries. Lucy wrote the memoir "Autobiography of a Face" about her experience. This is how Ann described Lucy: "Her lower jaw had been a ledge falling off just below her cheekbone when we started college, making her face a sharp triangle, but now the lines were softer. She couldn't close her mouth all the way and her front teeth showed. Her jaw was irregular, as if one side had been collapsed by a brutal punch, and her neck was scarred and slightly twisted. She had a patch of paler skin running from ear to ear that had been grafted from her back and there were other bits of irregular patching and scars. But she also had lovely light eyes with damp dark lashes and a nose whose straightness implied aristocracy. Lucy had white Irish skin and dark blond hair and in the end that's what you saw, the things that didn't change: her eyes, the sweetness of her little ears."Ann and Lucy became close when they were in grad school together in Iowa. They both had new dating experiences, and the slower pace of life in the Midwest made them feel like they were "impossibly rich in time." They filled their days with reading and teaching and dinner and dancing and, of course, writing."We shared our ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership. We gave over excess words, a single beautiful sentence that had to be cut but perhaps the other would like to have. As two reasonably intelligent and very serious young writers in a reasonably serious writing program, we didn't so much discuss our work as volley ideas back and forth until neither of us was sure who belonged to what."After grad school the two friends moved away but stayed in touch with visits and heartfelt letters, some of which Ann includes in the book. Sadly, Lucy later got involved in drugs and died too young. Ann would often dream of her, and she would have a conversation with her dear friend. "Night after night after night I find her, always in a public place, a museum, a restaurant, on a train. Every night she's glad to see me and she folds into my arms. But each time there is less of her to hold on to ... In this little way I am allowed to visit my dead."I was drawn to the book because I had loved Ann Patchett's novel "Bel Canto," so I picked it up just on name recognition. Her writing is lovely and sincere, and it made me adore Patchett even more. I highly recommend the book to writers and to anyone who loves a good story of friendship.Update November 2013:There was a lovely interview with Ann Patchett in the New York Times, during which she was asked which writer, dead or alive, would she meet? This was her answer: "I'd want to see my friend Lucy Grealy again. I'd want to know how the afterlife was treating her, if there was anything or everything about this world she missed. She'd say to me, 'My God, how did you get here?' And I would say, 'The New York Times Book Review told me I could meet any writer, living or dead, and I picked you!' Then I imagine there would be a great deal of hugging and dancing around."Read the full interview here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/boo...
A justly acclaimed memoir about the friendship between the novelist Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, State Of Wonder) and the memoirist/poet Lucy Grealy (Autobiography Of A Face).The two graduated the same year from Sarah Lawrence, but they became close only when they lived together while studying and teaching at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. That friendship continued through their years struggling to publish, win grants and fellowships, on through successes, setbacks, publication, fame and Grealy’s untimely death, in 2002, at 39.As Patchett points out early on in achingly beautiful prose, the two had an ant/grasshopper, turtle/hare dynamic. Patchett was the responsible one and Grealy, we soon see, was impulsive and needy, constantly requiring validation and love.And no wonder. At 9, Grealy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma. This led to the removal of her jawbone, and over the years she had dozens of reconstructive surgeries. All of this led to childhood and adolescent taunting, chronic pain and constant difficulty eating, and a lifetime of insecurity and self-consciousness about her looks. (She would detail this in Autobiography Of A Face years later.)What comes across clearly is a strange, mysterious alchemy – a chemistry, a blending of souls – in their friendship. We tend to think that only romantic love depends on chemistry; but friends need it too. And reading Patchett’s lines and reading between the lines, you can see the real love blossom between them. Patchett recounts the fun, the dancing, the talking, the drinking, the work, the petty squabbles over writing, men and messes both literal and figurative (while they were both writers, they weren’t as competitive since they wrote in different genres). She also includes generous glimpses of their correspondence to add context. (Spoiler alert: these women know how to write!)There are lots of laughs, like the time Grealy went on a blind date with George Stephanopoulos (even this episode, though, is tinged with sadness). And there are a couple of vivid descriptions of publishing parties, including one awkward one celebrating author Dennis McFarland. As the book progresses, and Grealy begins taking drugs because of pain caused by surgeries (including one where her tibia was removed to graft onto her face), you begin to see where the narrative is headed. But it’s never predictable. Near the end there are a couple of moments that must have caused Patchett great remorse to remember and write down.What do I take away from this book, besides wanting to read Grealy’s own memoir?I think about the role my closest, dearest friends play in my life. How many people would pretend they’re your sibling to stay by your hospital bedside after an operation? Who would you let stay with you so they could recover from addiction? Would you ever collect months and months of a friend’s bills and forge their signature on cheques so they wouldn’t have to deal with it all?There’s some codependency in these accounts, of which I’m sure Patchett is aware, but there’s also a fierce, unconditional love that is astonishing to behold.Lots of truth, and so much beauty.
What do You think about Truth And Beauty (2005)?
Having recently read "State of Wonder" and "Bel Canto", I became an overnight devoted fan of Ann Patchett. And how was I to know that the memoir of her dear friend and fellow author would be just about unreadable? The book describes this intense (passionate, though platonic) friendship with a female poet she met in college. The friend, Lucy, was a pitiful victim of cancer which left her without the lower half of her face. She underwent over 38 surgeries during her lifetime to try to rebuild her face. She suffered extraordinary pain and disfigurement and eventually addiction to drugs. Ann was a saint who supported her, sometimes financially, always emotionally, and frequently served as a cook, secretary, maid, dresser, and go-between. Here's the problem: neither Ann nor Lucy are even remotely likable people. Lucy is a whiny narcissistic selfish bitch and Ann is a boring martyr drudge. At one point in the book Ann is giving writerly advice to Lucy who is trying to come up with ideas for a novel. Ann says something to the effect that you can't make all of the characters despicable. Someone has to be at least superficially likable: GOOD ADVICE! It's clear from the first page that Lucy is going to die, so I am not giving away the ending. That being said, I eventually felt like Elaine on Seinfeld when she was "forced" to watch "The English Patient". She starts yelling in the theater: "Would ya just die already and get it over with!!"
—Judith
This is author Ann Patchett's memoir of her friendship with poet/memorist Lucy Grealy. I've read it twice now, once before reading Lucy's memoir and once afterwards, and both times I found it a curious and unsettling book – well written, beautifully observed, somehow distancing. With both readings I felt that no matter how often Patchett declared Lucy's magnetism and charm, it never came alive for me, but I also found this understandable – the elusive charm of certain people can only be experienced, rarely described. On the other hand, Patchett had no problem detailing Lucy's petulance, neediness, irresponsibility, self-absorption, and self-destructiveness, so I came away wondering just how loveable could Lucy be? Similarly, I never felt that I really knew Patchett, that she is almost incidental in her own book except in relation to Lucy (perhaps that is why I'm referring to one by her last name and the other by her first). Months later I read Lucy's bestselling memoir, “Autobiography of a Face” and couldn't resist returning to Patchett's version of Lucy's story, and was struck by the very personal details about Lucy that Patchett included in her memoir – but Lucy didn't in her own. Some see this as a betrayal of Lucy, who is not alive to take objection to what Patchett wrote, but I don't think that's the point: first of all, Patchett wouldn't have needed to write this book if Lucy were alive, and those details are part and parcel of Patchett's memory of her friend and their friendship; secondly, Lucy loved attention and was pretty much an open book and may have reveled in this exposure. In the end, though, nothing that Patchett described was surprising – because all of, it ALL of it, was finally about Lucy's sense of self, about whether she could be loved, about the dubious intertwinings of love and sex, about worthiness and self-worth and self-love. I know that many find the book to be a testimony to the power of love, a true and compelling tale of true and compelling friendship – and indeed it is, because there is no doubt about Patchett's devotion to her friend – but I'm left mournful.
—Anne
SPOILER ALERT!So this is really more like a 2.5 star read, but interesting in a train-wreck kind of way. This is the true story of Patchett's friendship and fascination with fellow author Lucy Grealy from college through Grealy's suicide in her late 30s. Grealy suffered from Ewing's sarcoma which claimed a part of her face in childhood and then she permitted it to take her self-respect and the rest of her life. Grealy told her own story in "Autobiography of a Face", and the story should have probably ended there, but Patchett decided the story was hers as well and essentially sold out her friend after her death. Grealy is pitiful and self-pitying, I found it nearly impossible to like her and even more difficult to respect her struggle. She used her face as an excuse for damned near everything from laziness to promiscuity to drug addiction. I am unsure why Patchett felt compelled to write this book, perhaps as a cleansing of sorts...hard to say, but it has dark and darker parts, nothing she describes sounds like real friendship and it all reads like a sad, stunted love affair, or a relationship between a caretaker and her ward. Ann conveys nothing about Lucy that makes me understand her weird attraction to her and Lucy offers little in the way of warmth or giving always taking with both hands to fill some bottomless pit of need. But if that's how she was, well, then, that IS the story I suppose.
—Sandra
