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.

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.

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.

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.

The agony of loving someone that you cannot fix.

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.

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.

Raw and next to life... this is what fiction should be! I enjoyed reading your work, Ann!

The book cover of my Harper Perennial edition features 19th century insect prints of a grasshopper and an ant; the pictorial image refers to the Aesop's Fable which Patchett draws upon throughout this memoir of a friendship between two writers. Ann Patchett styles herself as the careful, plodding ant, while Lucy Grealy is the devil-may-care grasshopper who revels in summer's plenty, but then has to beg for food when winter comes.

These two friends, who attended Sarah Lawrence together as undergraduates and later became best friends at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, carve out their roles and responsibilities from the start. Lucy will be the poet; Ann will write prose. Lucy will be the emotionally needy, brilliant one, and Ann will be the caretaking, steady one. Perhaps the essential characteristics of their different personalities would have been in place no matter what, but life has already carved them up in very specific ways. As a child, Lucy suffered from cancer - the treatment of which destroyed her face. Left without many teeth or much of a jaw, Lucy's life becomes a series of surgeries and reconstructions. By her early thirties, she has undergone more than 36 surgeries and finally has to face the reality that her face will never be rebuilt in any enduring way. She will never be beautiful. Rather like her disintegrating, melting face, Lucy is an endless pit of need. No matter how successful she is, no matter how devoted are the friends in her life, no matter how numerous the lovers, Lucy suffers from a depression and an utterly guiltless and bottomless neediness. Ann, on the other hand, is the child of divorce; careful and self-contained. She has been educated by Catholic nuns, who have encouraged her self-effacement and devotion to good deeds. There are many times in the book where it is quite difficult to fathom the depth of Ann's service to Lucy. She explains it quite early on. Realising that worrying about the self-destructive Lucy is counterproductive, and ultimately too draining, Ann decides to devote herself to helping Lucy in practical ways: feeding her, cleaning out her closet, dealing with her bills, sitting by her bedside, and holding her hand - both literally and metaphorically. "The world is saved through deeds, not prayer, because what is prayer but a kind of worry: I decided then that my love for Lucy would have to manifest in deeds."

The memoir covers a roughly 15 year period - through their early years of friendship in Iowa, to the glory years when they both achieve writing success, to the final, painful decline of Lucy who died at age 39. Patchett has a very clear but expressive writing style, and she doesn't overdramatise the events of this friendship; she doesn't need to. It's a moving tribute to the possibilities of friendship, and ultimately its limitations.

Ann Patchett wrote this book about her the best friend, poet Lucy Grealy (most famous for Autobiography of a Face) who died of a heroin overdose. This book purports to be about the great beauty and love of female friendships. The frankness in the book caused some deeply upset feelings from Lucy's sisters, one of whom wrote a scathing article in response.
Having read this book and read the article, I am inclined to agree with Lucy's family. This book is no tribute to Lucy and as Suellen stated, "My sister Lucy was a uniquely gifted writer. Ann, not so gifted, is lucky to be able to hitch her wagon to my sister's star. I wish Lucy's work had been left to stand on its own."
I hope my best friend would never speak so poorly of me, alive or dead. Skip this one for sure!

This is a story of a friendship between two writers. But for me it was about the horror of childhood cancer and also about the failure of our medical system. I found it a painful read and I really don't feel I can recommend. Ann Patchett writes about her friendship with Lucy Grealy. Because of my work in mental health, I found this book extremely painful but also so very, very accurate. Ann's telling of her friendship with Lucy was also very painful. A painful book.

There was a time in my life when I would've said that "Bel Canto" was my favorite book. It wasn't an entirely arbitrary choice, because each time I've read that book, starting with the first time when I was fourteen, it's astounded me with it's beauty and sensitivity and also what a helluva plot. If pressed, I often followed that "what's your favorite book" question (which always struck me as something kind of ridiculous-- "Halley, what's the favorite step you've ever taken?" How do I even answer that?) with Ann Patchett as one of my favorite authors, but if "Bel Canto" was an arbitrary answer, then that was even more so. I think she's a great writer but "Bel Canto" is the only book of hers that really touched me at all. The rest I found well-written but sort of pointlessly beautiful. (If that's even a phrase that means anything?)

But. This book. I'm in a sentimental place right now, but reading about the beautiful nuances of her friendship with Lucy really did move me. I ended up reading the last chapter aloud, twice, because I wanted to really absorb the words. I knew what was coming-- the dedication doesn't really leave a lot of room-- but even so, I kept hoping maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's immature but I've always believed that lovers can be lost but friendship should be forever-- it's the family you choose for yourself, and as such, it has to stick around forever. (I know. I know that's not true.) How could something so important get left behind? How do you live having been left? I read a blurb from Lucy's family that they wished AP hadn't written this book, that their grief should have been something private, but the enormity of what Patchett felt for Lucy radiates through this whole book and there's a part of me that believes there was no other way to deal with this story for her than to turn it into art. Patchett's meditations on Lucy's relation to non-fiction in her own work resonated here too-- she's a writer, this may not be verbatim the truth. She's building a portrait of someone immeasurably important to her and maybe the tiny pieces of her were exaggerated and tweaked but I do believe that this bigger, beautiful picture is Lucy Grealy to Ann Patchett as she knew her. Oh God, I'm still crying a little from finishing this. Pull it together, Sutton!