Book #57: Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

Officially, this book is listed as a memoir, but it feels more heavy-duty than that. That's probably because Patchett is such a skillful novelist, and her prose is just naturally more beautiful than many writers out there on the market. (Bel Canto is one of my favorite books that I've read in the last few years.) Her writing feels more Literature than a quickie read, but I really just buzzed through this book in just a few hours.

It seems like many memoirs these days have a very shticky, specific angle that the author is working on, like The Happiness Project or confessionals about a year with no sugar, etc., etc. This one feels more all-encompassing and with more depth than those. Patchett details her lifelong friendship with writer Lucy Grealy, up until Lucy's death from overdosing on heroin in 2002. Not only did Lucy have a significant physical disability (she had lost her lower jaw after extreme radiation for cancer when she was young), she also had a larger-than-life interesting and overwhelming personality and ability to show affection and demand it. Patchett does a wonderful job of capturing Lucy for the reader and getting you to see how their relationship grew and changed (and didn't change) over the decades they knew and loved each other. Lucy seems like she was a very difficult person to love--always demanding things and never taking care of herself, but she had many, many people who loved her. It was interesting to get to know Patchett herself too through this book. I really liked her comparison throughout the book of pairing herself to the ant and Lucy to the grasshopper: one always drudging away to save up for the winter and the other throwing everything to the wind to have a wonderful summer. I felt like I got a good sense of who they both were and loved reading about their relationship and how they cared for each other.