I am often at a loss with memoirs. I don't know what I'm expecting out of them, or how really to take them. As they're about lives, they don't conform to narrative conventions, but as they're not histories, they tend to give little of the context I crave. At best, they're someone giving you a glimpse into their life, and that springs vitally from the page. At worst, it feels like reading about a stranger, without enough of the context to understand.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

I didn’t know how I felt after finishing Truth and Beauty, and to be honest, I still don’t know. This book made me feel a lot of complex and conflicting feelings. I guess that’s good? But I’m not sure I can articulate everything in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed.

A friend gave this to me as a kind of housewarming present after I tweeted that “I wish we talked more about friendship the way we talk about romance”. I love it when people pick books for me tailored on something they know about me (as opposed to “lol dawg I heard you like books”), and I was excited when I received this. Plus, Ann Patchett’s n  Bel Canton was one of my favourite books of 2012, and re-reading my review makes me just want to read it again. So I embarked on Truth and Beauty, though maybe some of my subsequent discontent is a result of reading it during the busy start of the school year rather than a more meditative, relaxing point in time.

My tweet was commenting on the way that our society generally prioritizes romance above platonic relationships. We have a “friendzone” that precludes romance, and we have to clarify when someone is “just a friend” as opposed to “more than friends”. We have a hierarchy that posits romance (and, generally, monogamous romance) as superior to everyday companionship, sexual or otherwise. I’ve been taught from an early age that friendship is all well and good, but in general, most of the people I get close to in life will probably one day find the “special someone” who then becomes the number 1 person for them. So even when your alloromantic friends are good people, sometimes they can’t help but make you feel more alone.

Anyway, although this book didn’t provide the boost or reaffirmation that I think it was intended to, I definitely see why my friend gave it to me on the strength of that one tweet. In Truth and Beauty, Patchett recounts what is essentially a queerplatonic relationship with Lucy Grealy. Having met and roomed together in college, Ann and Lucy remain friends for life, even when living on different continents. They talk to each other all the time, comment on each other’s love lives and writing ambitions—and talk about Lucy’s health. Lucy’s bout of cancer as a child has left her with facial deformities and a bone structure that doesn’t accept the numerous grafts her surgeons keep trying on her. Unable to eat much and self-conscious of her stand-out appearance, Lucy deals with this situation by adopting the persona of an adventurous, promiscuous, happy-go-lucky waif. Yet Ann is one of the members of her inner circle of friends who see beyond her aura to the spectre of depression that looms constantly over Lucy.

On the one hand, parts of this book could be reassuring when considered separately. Ann and Lucy do remain friends for life, despite often being separated by great distances. This was in a time before Skype, even, so if they could do it, I can do it. The first section, where Patchett intersperses her writing with Lucy’s (roughly contemporaneous) letters, is great. It shows two women striking out into the world of adulthood and trying to negotiate their individual understandings of what this means. I really like the glimpse that Patchett provides into how they talked with each other, what they talked about, and their differing attitudes towards writing, romance, and sex.

On the other hand, the relationship Patchett describes is not a healthy one. Lucy does not seem to give much back in this friendship, unless it’s just that Ann needed to be needed. For example, Patchett recalls how Lucy would, when out with a group, jump into Ann’s lap and ask her if she still loves Lucy the most, a way of centering attention on Lucy and also reaffirming their mutual affection. Patchett presents it as supposedly sweet and adorable behaviour, but it’s manipulative. Lucy is a manipulator, a charmer of doctors and a collector of friends. It’s hard to tell how much of her behaviour is calculated (either consciously or unconsciously), of course, from only Patchett’s obviously biased perspective, and how much just appears manipulative.

Should I be judgmental? Isn’t the point of friendship that it’s this wonderful state of being between two people, and they negotiate its parameters the way they like it, and if Ann wants to be there for Lucy, 100 per cent of the time, no matter what, no matter how little an effort Lucy makes to be there for her or even for herself, isn’t that between them? Yes and no. I think my discomfort comes from how Patchett never really comments much during the book about her feelings about this relationship (though, to be fair, she essentially lowers the boom on herself at the very end). I respect that she refuses to clean up her friendship for the page—yet at the same time, she seems to gloss over the periods of obvious tumult and recession. There’s a flat affect to this book, with Ann going through the motions of her life, waiting for the next “Lucy-sode” to intrude. And that might be part of it, too: Patchett mentions just enough autobiographical details to ground us in the context of events, but we seldom get to see more of her own personal life. What were her other friendships like? Did she have someone she could turn to like Lucy could turn to her? It’s hard to know.

Moreover, I suppose I’m weirded out by Ann and Lucy’s relationship because it is an extreme version of the kind of friendship I could see myself getting into. I take it as a cautionary tale, if you will. I enjoy helping people, and I actively base a lot of my ego on helping people. If you want to get me to do something, the easiest way is just to frame it in such a way that it would seem like I’m really helping you out. I don’t know why I’m like this, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing���but I recognize that my desire to feel helpful can, when carried to extremes, be unhealthy for myself. There are times when you have to say “no” to someone, because to say “yes” would burden you to an unhealthy extent. For whatever reason, I have been lucky enough up until now not to be at the fulcrum of someone’s crisis moment and expected to react swiftly and decisively (and if I go my whole life without such a moment, that would be just fine). So Ann and Lucy’s friendship makes me worry, more than anything.

There is definitely Truth, and there is Beauty, to this memoir. Patchett’s writing occasionally reminds me of that lyrical and incisive author of Bel Canto:

Lucy thought that all she needed was one person, the right person, and all that empty space would be taken away from her. But there was no one in the world who was big enough for that. She believed that if she had a jaw that was like everyone else’s jaw, she would have found that person by now. She was trapped in a roomful of mirrors, and every direction she looked in, she saw herself, her face, her loneliness. She couldn’t see that no one else was perfect either, and that so much of love was the work of it. She had worked on everything else. Love would have to be charmed.

That’s beautiful, and true, I think, and I wish I could have seen more of that in this book. But if Patchett concludes her memoir by describing her mistake, then this, here, is Lucy’s: this obsession, again, with romantic love as the end-all, be-all of human relationships, when she has so many vibrant friendships (it seems) and a particularly good one with Ann.

I guess I knew from the beginning that the book would end with Lucy’s death (though I didn’t know the particulars). And I’m far from opposed to books with downer endings. I like them—when I am in the right mood. Maybe reading this right after n  When Dimple Met Rishin was a bad call, or maybe I should have saved it for a week off or something.

Maybe it’s just that truth is often less satisfying than fiction; there is no redemption arc here. Maybe my problem is not with the book itself but with the whole form, an my preference for fiction is not merely that of an addict’s sweet-tooth but a preference for the neatness of fictional lives. John and Aeryn fighting the Peacekeepers. Kim and Ron stopping Dr. Drakken. Adama and Roslyn attempting to keep a fractious group of survivors together. These are the stories that move me, while real life, I guess, is just too real sometimes.

(Speaking of Kim Possible, sometimes I just wish life were like a superhero cartoon and I could have a nemesis. This is clearly the most superior form of relationship, beyond friendship, romance, or anything else.)

If the measure of a book’s greatness is entirely based on how much makes one think and feel, then Truth and Beauty is obviously a great book. Yet if we factor in satisfaction, even the type to be found in reading about sadness, then it misses the mark for me by a wide margin.

n  n

“Truth and Beauty” is the story of authors Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy’s (“Autobiography of a Face”) friendship, commencing from their college days until Lucy’s death in 2002 at age 39. The title of the book “Truth and Beauty” is taken from a chapter and several references in Lucy’s book.

Lucy Grealy is mercurial, irresponsible, needy, and an immensely talented writer. She is seriously facially disfigured from having half of her jawbone removed due to Ewing’s sarcoma as a child and from numerous subsequent reconstructive surgeries. She tells her own story in “Autobiography of a Face” (which I suggest that you read before “Truth and Beauty”). Ann Patchett is solid, responsible, hard-working and possibly less talented. Their interdependency, and how their friendship ebbs and flows as they move through professional and personal successes and failures in their lives, is the heart and soul of the book.

Some have questioned Patchett’s motives in writing the book (including Lucy’s family members), but I leave that to the reader to judge. It seems to me that any writer in Patchett’s situation would have done the same, perhaps less honestly and less skillfully. Suellen Grealy, Lucy’s sister, outlines her grievances with Ann Patchett in an article in The Guardian from 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/...

Overall, I’m glad I read Grealy’s “Autobiography of a Face” first and I thought “Truth and Beauty” was extremely interesting and well written. I highly recommend both.

Ann Pratchett has a beautiful way with tragedy.

Her novels are lovely and evocative; here, she trains that same lyricism on the greatest tragedy of her own life, the death of her best friend. Bereft of her family and having lost her lower jaw to a childhood cancer, Lucy is brilliant, shockingly charismatic, and stunningly needy. She's a poet who becomes famous instead for her memoir, a beloved friend who's popular wherever she goes and cannot fill an aching loneliness. Pratchett's account of their decades-long friendship, beginning at the Iowa Writers Workshop and progressing as both friends' writing careers begin to take off, is funny and sweet, engaging you before yanking the heartstrings.

It's not maudlin or tasteless, and certainly not inspirational. Pratchett is too good a writer, and Lucy too good a friend, for that. Lucy's endless surgeries to try to repair her jaw become a whirlpool that sucks in anyone who comes near. Whenever it starts to feel like vanity, we are reminded of the repeated bouts of pneumonia, choking fits, and near starvation that is a result of her mangled face. Pratchett is simultaneously deeply sympathetic, skeptical, and anguished, and she pulls us in as well.

It's the kind of story about the depths of friendship that is made for cheesy cover copy. But it isn't Chicken Soup for the Soul. What it is is a profound meditation on love, and a gentle monument to grief.

There should be a government warning on this book.

When I pick up a book with a cheesy title, and a cheesy cover with a cheesy butterfly on it, I do not expect to get, to put it simply, my sh*t rocked.

This book is very sad, and very beautiful, and very powerful.

I did not know a thing about it going into it, and that made for both a pleasant surprise and the reading equivalent of a near-death experience.

This is just excellent.

Bottom line: One of the best reads I didn't expect of my life.

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pre-review

i am currently a strong breeze away from crying.

review to come / 4.5 stars maybe 5

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currently-reading updates

oh, no. i think i'm going to be sad

clear ur shit prompt 12: free space
follow my progress here

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tbr review

i recently heard that this is the best book with the dumbest title and am 200% more excited

A moving portrait of a friendship interrupted, this book swept me away. There is something to be said about the picture of Patchett as a Catholic martyr, canonizing herself through sheer force of will, but my read is more generous: she is truly, simply, ultimately a good friend. Lucy Grealy was a force of nature and a genius, and every day without her voice and vision is a loss.

Read Autobiography of a Face!!!

A love letter in book form. Patchett's nearly unconditional love for her friend Lucy Greely is palpable and I fell in love with them too. I don't think I've ever encountered a book conveys the importance and depth of friendship as well as this book does. And there's so much more here as well because both women were/are artists and deep thinkers.

After reading Autobiography of a Face last year, and learning about this book, I knew I had to read it. Patchett writes about her friendship with fellow writer Lucy Grealy.

In her autobiography, Grealy gives us an edited look at her life, naturally; she chose not to disclose much that Patchett shares in this book.

There's quite a lot about sex included, unfortunately; there's an abortion and liberal attitudes about it; there are major themes of deep depression and suicide; Grealy abuses drugs and alcohol.

As a Christian, it was painful to see how much emotional pain Grealy, especially, was in, and how she refused to even believe in God - the only One with the power to deliver her from her pain. But also, it was sad to know that others in the book, the author included, are just as lost spiritually, though on the outside they may seem more composed.

I really enjoyed hearing about the writing life, from college to fellowships and book deals.

I definitely recommend that others read Autobiography of a Face first, as it starts with an earlier time period and, I think, gives some critical background information.

A beautiful book of friendship between Ann Pratchett and Lucy Grealy. They met in high school and became friends in college. A love story of friends. If we have not experienced a friendship like this we have missed a beautiful life experience. I laughed, I cried, I grieved. Highly recommend.

This book is the story of a friendship - A dedicated friendship that was not one-sided as it might seem. This is a difficult story to read and messy. I'd like to think that Patchett wasn't trying to make herself out as some kind of hero but I'm not sure. Perhaps Patchett was trying to show her readers a selfless love. And I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book after reading Grealy's Autobiography of a Face (which I read first). A few years back, when I was studying memoir in grad school, I read about Grealy's memoir and her brilliant teaching. Then I had read negative reviews of the Patchett book which was billed as a bit of a companion piece the Grealy's book. In my mind then, I thought Grealy was older, a teacher of Patchett's. She was, perhaps. It seems that there is brutal honesty in this book but while it may not have been intentional, it paints a pretty rough picture of Grealy. I have read Patchett's lastest book of essays but I've never read any of her fiction. Some folks say it's brilliant. I think that I will wait a while before tackling any of it. I need some space from this narrative. If one were going to read only one of the books about these two, I recommend Grealy's book. Whatever you do, don't read this one first. It's a bit too messy and detailed. There could have been far less included that would have sufficiently told the story.

Ugh. I’ve enjoyed a few Ann Patchett novels but I certainly didn’t enjoy this book. I read Lucy Grealy’s book so long ago I can only remember that I liked it.

In my opinion Ann was codependent to a selfish, immature young woman. A woman who, according to Ann, everyone loved very much yet she could find no one to love her. It wasn’t her face. She seems to have had a LOT of sex partners. (and if any of my friends tell as much about my past sex life as Ann did Lucy’s - please strike yourselves off of my friendship list now!) It was, in Ann’s telling, her clinging personality.
I read her sister Suellen’s article in the Guardian. I feel sorry for the family.

I’m sure I’ve never had, or been, a friend so charismatic that horses wouldn’t cooperate if the person wasn’t around - and I’m not sure Lucy was either.

I finished the book only because I don’t comment on books I haven’t read - and I wanted to say how much I disliked Ann and her somewhat aggressive stories about a poor, addicted, spoiled young woman.

Beautiful and Heartbreaking

Truth & Beauty is a non-fiction story about the friendship between the author, Ann Patchett, and writer and poet, Lucy Grealy, which was published in 2004.

Ann met Lucy in her college years. They became roommates, and their friendship was rock-solid from there on out. They both had a passion for becoming writers.

Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise very dull lives. We were better off when we were together.

On the cover of this book is an ant and a grasshopper. It's beautiful, but there is a deeper meaning behind these insects than pure aesthetics. In their friendship, Ann identified as the ant whereas Lucy was the grasshopper.

..but being the ant, I never understood the pleasure of barely slipping something in under the wire. I had spent the winter out west, methodically chipping away at my second novel, stacking up the pages at my regular steady pace.

Sometimes I worried that Lucy saw me as the ant I was, unglamourous, toiling...sometimes I aspired to be a grasshopper myself, to live in the city and go to parties, to have bright conversations with famous people instead of washing my grandmother's hair and making her grilled cheese sandwiches.

Despite their opposing personality traits, they had a bond that was inseparable.

Even when Lucy was devastated or difficult, she was the person I knew best in the world, the person I was the most comfortable with. Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy, I was a native speaker.

Despite Ann being Lucy's strength and vice-versa, Lucy had demons that she couldn't shake. As a child, Lucy beat cancer, which resulted in going through numerous rounds of radiation and chemotherapy that left her face disfigured. She always felt that she would never find true love. In order to fix her face, she underwent 38 surgeries in her lifetime, seeking one promising fix after the next, with no avail. When she was finally told in her late thirties that there was nothing else that could be done, she turned to using drugs and alcohol to ease the pain.

Ann was worried about Lucy but never felt that anything could destroy her friend because Lucy's body had sustained so much, and yet she kept going. She was a fighter.

She had a nearly romantic relationship with death. She had beaten it so many times that she was convinced she could go and kiss all she wanted and still come out on the other side...
Having survived 38 operations, she had become invincible. She believed that most basic rules of life did not apply to her.

One review of this book described it as a "grief-haunted eulogy," and I completely agree. Patchett pays tribute to her best friend through the telling of their long-lasting friendship spanning many years. It's tragic, unforgettable, and yet beautiful at the same time.

I loved every minute of this book and I'm grateful to Ann Patchett for sharing this story so all can know her brilliant friend, Lucy Grealy, who passed away of a heroin overdose in 2002.