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Truth & Beauty

ann patchett

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Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy’s critically acclaimed memoir Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth and Beauty, the story isn’t Lucy’s life or Ann’s life but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined--and what happens when one is left behind.

257 pages, Paperback

First published May 11,2004
Literary awards
ala alex award, chicago tribune heartland prize, 

This edition

Format
257 pages, Paperback
Published
April 5, 2005 by Harper Perennial
ISBN
9780060572150
ASIN
0060572159
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Ann Patchett

    Ann Patchett

    Ann Patchett (born December 2, 1963) is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchetts other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, State of Wonder, and Th...

  • Lucy Grealy

    Lucy Grealy

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About the author

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ann patchett

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Patchett was born in Los Angeles, California. Her mother is the novelist Jeanne Ray.

She moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was six, where she continues to live. Patchett said she loves her home in Nashville with her doctor husband and dog. If asked if she could go any place, that place would always be home. "Home is ...the stable window that opens out into the imagination."

Patchett attended high school at St. Bernard Academy, a private, non-parochial Catholic school for girls run by the Sisters of Mercy. Following graduation, she attended Sarah Lawrence College and took fiction writing classes with Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. She later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she met longtime friend Elizabeth McCracken. It was also there that she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.

In 2010, when she found that her hometown of Nashville no longer had a good book store, she co-founded Parnassus Books with Karen Hayes; the store opened in November 2011. In 2012, Patchett was on the Time 100 list of most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
RightGate
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I loved this memoir by Ann Patchett about her friendship with Lucy Grealy. Patchett is my current favorite author, and I’m working my way through her backlist. I love her nonfiction even more than her fiction. An interesting thing about this book was that it was chosen as a freshman book selection for Clemson University back in like 2006, and a group of protestors decided the book was not fit for students to read and made a big stink about it. Ann wrote an essay for The Atlantic that she included in her book This is the Story of a Happy Marriage about the whole episode. Kinda funny and sad to think that some people would be afraid for students to read Ann Patchett, that a book of hers would be censored.
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bonngg
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Ann Patchett is one of my favorite authors, and “Truth and Beauty” reminded me why. Her prose is lilting and beautiful, and the story (this is a memoir of a relationship) rings authentic and honest. Lucy Grealy had undergone extensive chemotherapy and she lost part of her jaw in a childhood battle with cancer. As an adult, she endured more than 30 reconstructive operations and wrestled with addiction precipitated by painkillers. Both Lucy and Ann were struggling writers, and their friendship began during their college years and throughout the lean ones until both reached success. “Truth and Beauty” chronicles their enduring friendship over the years, in various locales and during endless medical crises for Lucy. It was interesting to see the references to Ann’s books as they were published—I’ve loved so many of them. Tender, sad, sometimes excruciating, I’m so glad I read this book. “The Autobiography of a Face” is already on my Libby shelf.
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StarKillerTy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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A beautiful book of a beautiful friendship. Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy became friends in 1981 when they were 21, both attending Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Lucy Grealy was disfigured after cancer treatment when she was a young girl and spent the rest of her life remaking her face. The book is about their life together as friends. They were very close and clearly loved each other.

"I do not remember our love unfolding, that we got to know one another and in time became friends. I only remember that she came through the door and it was there, huge and permanent and first. I felt I had been chosen by Lucy and I was thrilled. I was twenty-one years old and very strong. She had a habit of pitching herself into my arms like a softball without any notice. She liked to be carried."

Talented, super sensitive and outgoing, Lucy Grealy had a lot of friends who adored her. Yet, neither her friends nor boyfriends could fill the loneliness inside her. She was damaged in many ways, not just in her face. A woman like her needs a lot of love, care and money to survive. In the end, she didn’t. It is easy to judge someone who died of a cocaine overdose, but I doubt I’d survive as long as she did if I were in her shoes. At least to die alone but loved is better than to die alone.
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personinpajamas
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I liked this miles more than Autobiography of a Face. Ann writes Lucy in a way that you can actually sink your teeth into - she’s neurotic, cruelly jealous, and most of the time seems completely insufferable (in context of course). But Ann loves her so much, and you can see all of the beautiful in her too. She has a unique lust for life, she’s brilliant, and she’s fascinating. A complex female friendship if there ever was one. You get all the sides of Lucy and her life that she didn’t show the world in her own book, and seeing them through Ann’s eyes is probably the best way to understand her. I’ve never read a memoir like this before and I really really liked it.
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dx349
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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The agony of loving someone that you cannot fix.
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Nobef
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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The friendship of Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett was extraordinary and excruciating. I’ve had some remarkable friendships in my life, but this book forced serious introspection. I identify with Ann, and wonder: could I love someone as broken or needy as Lucy? Would I have the courage to stand up to a self-destructing friend? Do I have the fortitude to stick by a friend through gruesome surgeries/recoveries? Or maybe I am more of Lucy--searching for Perfect Love, drawing others in for my own amusement, masking deep hurts with superficial chaos. So perhaps I am both of Ann and Lucy.

I’m not a big fan of the new paperback’s Ya-Ya-Sisterhood cover, but turns out I AM a big fan of author Ann Patchett. (I swear, just when I think I'm hopelessly wed to fiction, a book like this comes along and changes everything...) Above all, this book reaffirmed what I know of friendship—-it makes us in the best of times, and saves us in the worst of times.
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Isuspep
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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I had never heard of Lucy Grealy. Should I have? State of Wonder was one of my favourite reads this year, and I really liked Bel Canto. This memoir is well written, but Lucy is so unlikeable that I think I kept reading waiting for the time when Ann was going to finally tell her to get lost. Ann tells us repeatedly how charismatic Lucy was and how much people loved her, but I just couldn't get it. An example, Lucy wasn't getting enough attention at a dinner so she SAT IN ANN's lap and then proceeded to eat her meal. At another party, celebrating the publication of Ann's novel, anytime someone tries to speak to Ann Lucy stands in between then and puts her head on Ann's shoulder. I was really interested in the development of Ann and Lucy as writers and especially the years at the Iowa workshop and right after. This is a good book, well written and although it's an easy read .... I felt exhausted at the end. I picked up Lucy Grealy's memoir from the library this afternoon, I can't wait to read her version of the events.
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bonngg
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 25,2025
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Raw and next to life... this is what fiction should be! I enjoyed reading your work, Ann!
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