not big on pet names but "my little lamp on the wharf" revolutionized the field of endearments

i had never read ann patchett nor had i ever read a book where the muse was a friend. there's something so rich and unmined about friendship, especially-I think-between women. I loved this. Every page.

Truth and Beauty tells the story of author Ann Patchett's beautiful and tragic friendship with Lucy. The audio edition is narrated by Ann herself. I had never heard of Lucy Grealy (where have I been?) before listening to Ann's book, so I now have more to add to my To Read bookshelf. I love Ann's work and feel a kinship with her (she grew up and lives about 50 miles from me and we are only one month apart in age) and this story has taught me so much about both women.

I was very interested to read about Lucy Grealy, a brilliant poet who died at 39.

But from the very beginning Patchett uses a style that greatly annoyed me and which - by want of a more suitable word - I can only describe as 'passive-aggressive-praise'. By that I mean showering constant praise on someone (Lucy) and always affirming that this person is more talented than the one giving the praise (Ann), and more intelligent, more fun, more everything. But the praise is laced with tiny, almost imperceptible razor-sharp needle pricks to make clear that, in fact, Lucy is the looser and Ann the real deal.

“Truth and Beauty” was my first Patchett and I liked her style. The narrative demanded attention and propelled me forward as any good read should do. A memoir, the story surrounds the author’s exhausting 20 year journey supporting her best friend, the child-like Lucy, who is both medically fragile and self-destructive. Very well-written, the book touches on so many human conditions—illness, navigating health care, friendship, co-dependency, and finally honesty. My only problem with the book is that early on I realized how it was going to end and there was a bit of dread of the impending train wreck. I recommend the book, however, and will try another Patchett to discover how her style transfers to fiction.

My poor review has nothing to do with Patchett's writing ability. I found the story very disturbing, I couldn't understand other than her writing accolades what Patchett got out of this unhealthy friendship. Lucy was such a negative, manipulative person that her 'looks' to me were very much beside the point.

Okay, I'm gonna come out and say something earnest here, in a short break from the usual foul-mouthed cynicism. I think books ought to have courage; I think memoirs, out of all books, must have courage. And this one doesn't.

This is supposed to be the story of a twenty-year friendship between two women writers, but in reality this is just a book about Lucy Grealy, the girl who lost most of her face to cancer, the eventual darling of the New York literary scene, the heroin addict. The cowardice starts there, letting this book be about Lucy, who is dead, about how larger than life and brilliant and fucked up she was, because that way Patchett never really has to tell us much more than the executive summary of herself. But it doesn't stop there. This is a book about a really long, complicated friendship, where one party clearly had serious psychological problems (Borderline Personality Disorder, at least based on this narration – seriously, you can go down a freaking checklist). It's hard to explain what I'm pointing at when I say this book lacks courage. It talks about Lucy's neediness, her clinginess, her bursts of demanding infantilism, but it's in this weird, belligerent way that says, see, I'm telling you all this to show you just how much I must have loved her. Not I loved her, so I can tell these stories now that she's gone to grieve and remember and be truthful.

Like, for example, there are a half dozen pieces of evidence scattered throughout the book that Lucy was a . . . let's say fabulist. In parts of her nonfiction, and in parts of her life. And Patchett just tosses this stuff out there and doesn't touch it, not once. I don't want to piece together evidence from a friendship/memoir/fragmented biography – I want the evidence, and I want Patchett's thoughts on it, I wanted honesty about this part of Lucy, too, along with how she submitted herself again and again to abusive surgeries. I don't want diamond clarity – that's a weird thing to want from a memoir – but I do want . . . more real participation. Reflections on Lucy that reflect Patchett, too. Something that wasn't an entire book of an apology. Something braver, because you know the most summary, cursory part of this book? The few flat lines at the end, after Lucy overdoses. This is a book all about Patchett's grief, and yet, at the last, she hides her face.

Courage. Not something easily found in grief, but I have high expectations.

Still. Lucy's excerpted letters were beautiful.

This book spoke to me on many levels. I am absorbing its pain and love and mania...

ohhhhhhh. broke my heart! & ultimately i think stronger than autobiography of a face but not so much because of the writing (immaculate in both), more because it is intrinsically more interesting to read a memoir about someone the author knows intimately than it is to read a memoir about the author herself; and also because patchett is granted a perspective that grealy couldn’t possibly have had, which makes the comparison slightly unfair. undeniably both books are astonishing & getting to read them feels like a privilege. but then also neither are as good on their own as they are taken together! which makes me think in turn about ann and lucy themselves and ann and lucy as writers, their symbiotic codependent russian doll relationship that is mirrored in these two books that are without a doubt excellent & yet function best as a pair.

idk i’m trying not to wax pretentiously poetic but it’s proving quite difficult to express how & why this moved me (beyond the obvious)! i think in particular it comes down to patchett’s account of their early/mid-twenties when both women were trying to establish themselves as serious writers; i usually make a conscious effort not to project too hard on whatever i’m reading but AS a tryhard serious writer with a handful of published short stories & reasonably prestigious shortlistings & prize wins this really made me feel - at the risk of sounding cliché - incredibly Seen. the ups and downs, the dread, the neuroses, the despondency and the euphoria! i ultimately couldn’t stop myself from projecting incredibly hard, undoubtedly aided by the way i could see myself both in ann (the toiling ant to lucy’s flashy grasshopper, the Tidier of Messes both real and emotional) and in lucy (her fragility, her insecurities, her profligacy) so that inevitably at the end i felt like i’d lost one of my own friends or even some part of myself - although of course that doesn’t make much sense & is probably horribly self-absorbed to boot. well! this whole review probably doesn’t make much sense! the point is i loved it & i’m very sad!

Addicts are not very likable. At best I found Lucy Grealy tiresome. That was at the beginning of Patchett's memoir about their friendship. By the end my feelings for Lucy had turned into active dislike.

I don't think this was the author's intent. When Lucy dies, she says: "I had thought I could let her go. But now I know I was simply not cut out for life without her. I am living that life now and would not choose it." But she never made me see why this should be. Why was she so devoted to Lucy, why were so many others? The Lucy I got to know in this book did not in any way merit such devotion. Yes, she was sucker-punched by life as a child. And survived. But a spoiled brat who was sucker-punched by life is still a spoiled brat. There are many reasons why people use other people. But they are still users.

I also did not much like the Ann Patchett described in this book. And really, their lives were not that enlightening or interesting.

I did like the writing, though, and will probably look to read some of Patchett's novels.

I learned how not to treat friends.

I couldn't believe that Ann didn't end her friendship with Lucy after so many irritating incidents on Lucy's part. I would have backed out of sharing an apartment with Lucy if she had jumped up on me when I first arrived at the apartment.

When Lucy demanded that Ann tell her that she (Ann) loved her most, why did Ann cater to her wishes?

The author did not explain to my satisfaction why Lucy continued to have friends. Apparently Lucy must have had some sort of charisma. Surely pity could not have kept her friends hanging around, watching for her to drop crumbs their way. It seemed to me that Lucy just used her friends.

Maybe the answer is in Autobiography of a Face. I have not read that book.

Having recently read "State of Wonder" and "Bel Canto", I became an overnight devoted fan of Ann Patchett. And how was I to know that the memoir of her dear friend and fellow author would be just about unreadable? The book describes this intense (passionate, though platonic) friendship with a female poet she met in college. The friend, Lucy, was a pitiful victim of cancer which left her without the lower half of her face. She underwent over 38 surgeries during her lifetime to try to rebuild her face. She suffered extraordinary pain and disfigurement and eventually addiction to drugs. Ann was a saint who supported her, sometimes financially, always emotionally, and frequently served as a cook, secretary, maid, dresser, and go-between.

Here's the problem: neither Ann nor Lucy are even remotely likable people. Lucy is a whiny narcissistic selfish bitch and Ann is a boring martyr drudge. At one point in the book Ann is giving writerly advice to Lucy who is trying to come up with ideas for a novel. Ann says something to the effect that you can't make all of the characters despicable. Someone has to be at least superficially likable: GOOD ADVICE!

It's clear from the first page that Lucy is going to die, so I am not giving away the ending. That being said, I eventually felt like Elaine on Seinfeld when she was "forced" to watch "The English Patient". She starts yelling in the theater: "Would ya just die already and get it over with!!"