“Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”
― Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty
I devoured this book. I read it on my phone no less while travelling. I love everything Anne Patchett writes. I discovered her late in life, but better late than never. What is it I like about her books? Each one is so different, it’s actually hard for me to pin down, but her sentences are like butter. Everything goes with them. And once you taste one you want to scarf all the rest down as quickly as possible. Her stories flow effortlessly and take you with them. Bel Canto, her fourth novel was her breakout book. Truth and Beauty was a departure for her, as it’s non-fiction. Ann is known primarily for her novels. But this is a riveting story of a fraught, and sometimes crazily co-dependent friendship. Her best friend at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a character named Lucy Grealy, a talented writer and poet in her own right, a fun loving extrovert who wrote a memoir called Autobiograpy of a Face. Lucy had childhood cancer in her jaw and was permanently disfigured as a result, and the book is often about her struggle to find love and come to terms with this very visible and painful trauma and the endless surgeries she endures to improve her face and her health. She makes over the top needy demands of her best friend, Ann, who tries her best with true devotion.
I loved it because it was ultimately about the love girlfriends have for one another, as well as the struggle to become a writer, with all its losses, rejections, hard scrabble hard work, the worship of books and the life of the mind, and the sometimes moving friendships one has with other fellows along the path. I couldn’t put it down. It’s really for anyone who has ever had a troubled friend. It’s all I can do to keep downloading everything from Ann Patchett onto my kindle, as well as Lucy Grealy’s book. Although the latter’s story is so painful, I’m waiting. Interesting factoid: Ann Patchett interestingly also has an independent bookstore @parnassusbooks in Nashville, Tennessee, one of my favourite places in the world, and I went to visit her store, which felt something like a pilgrimage.
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