This is a beautiful memoir of a friendship between two writers, Ann Patchett and the poet Lucy Grealy. I read this back in 2006, and it's still one of my favorite books about the nature of friendship and the bonds that we form with others.

Ann met Lucy in college, and later they both attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop. As a child, Lucy had suffered cancer of the jaw and her face was disfigured during numerous reconstruction surgeries. Lucy wrote the memoir "Autobiography of a Face" about her experience. This is how Ann described Lucy:

"Her lower jaw had been a ledge falling off just below her cheekbone when we started college, making her face a sharp triangle, but now the lines were softer. She couldn't close her mouth all the way and her front teeth showed. Her jaw was irregular, as if one side had been collapsed by a brutal punch, and her neck was scarred and slightly twisted. She had a patch of paler skin running from ear to ear that had been grafted from her back and there were other bits of irregular patching and scars. But she also had lovely light eyes with damp dark lashes and a nose whose straightness implied aristocracy. Lucy had white Irish skin and dark blond hair and in the end that's what you saw, the things that didn't change: her eyes, the sweetness of her little ears."

Ann and Lucy became close when they were in grad school together in Iowa. They both had new dating experiences, and the slower pace of life in the Midwest made them feel like they were "impossibly rich in time." They filled their days with reading and teaching and dinner and dancing and, of course, writing.

"We shared our ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership. We gave over excess words, a single beautiful sentence that had to be cut but perhaps the other would like to have. As two reasonably intelligent and very serious young writers in a reasonably serious writing program, we didn't so much discuss our work as volley ideas back and forth until neither of us was sure who belonged to what."

After grad school the two friends moved away but stayed in touch with visits and heartfelt letters, some of which Ann includes in the book. Sadly, Lucy later got involved in drugs and died too young. Ann would often dream of her, and she would have a conversation with her dear friend. "Night after night after night I find her, always in a public place, a museum, a restaurant, on a train. Every night she's glad to see me and she folds into my arms. But each time there is less of her to hold on to ... In this little way I am allowed to visit my dead."

I was drawn to the book because I had loved Ann Patchett's novel "Bel Canto," so I picked it up just on name recognition. Her writing is lovely and sincere, and it made me adore Patchett even more. I highly recommend the book to writers and to anyone who loves a good story of friendship.

Update November 2013:
There was a lovely interview with Ann Patchett in the New York Times, during which she was asked which writer, dead or alive, would she meet? This was her answer:

"I'd want to see my friend Lucy Grealy again. I'd want to know how the afterlife was treating her, if there was anything or everything about this world she missed. She'd say to me, 'My God, how did you get here?' And I would say, 'The New York Times Book Review told me I could meet any writer, living or dead, and I picked you!' Then I imagine there would be a great deal of hugging and dancing around."

Read the full interview here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/boo...

Truth & Beauty is Ann Patchett’s memoir detailing her friendship with Lucy Grealy, a fellow writer and poet.

Ann and Lucy met while attending college at Sarah Lawrence before both moving on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where they became friends. Lucy dealt with long lasting impacts of childhood cancer and had countless reconstructive surgeries. She was constantly recovering. Both women pursued writing careers, taking teaching jobs and writer residencies in various locations as these opportunities arose. Their friendship was a rollercoaster, filled with highs and lows.

I felt for what Lucy had to endure and can’t imagine the toll it took, physically and mentally. Ann is a good friend— patient, empathetic and caring. I enjoyed hearing about the progression of her writing career and learning more about her friendship with Lucy. Truth & Beauty felt personal and it’s clear both women were inspired by the other in different ways. Ann can write about anything and I’m here for it.

Glad I finally got round to reading this, but it was a more uncomfortable read than I expected it to be.

Truth and Beauty tells the story of how Ann and Lucy Grealy met and became friends. This is not your standard story of female friendship though. The goodreads blurb says this is a story about loyalty and "unwavering commitment", but (at least in Patchett's portrayal of it) it seems more of a one way relationship to me - of Ann doing anything and everything she could do to help her friend, and her friend exploiting that kindness while being incredibly narcissistic. However I am also aware that Lucy's family were unhappy with Ann's portrayal of her in this book which makes me wonder how accurate or perhaps embellished it was, so I still want to read Autobiography of a Face to see how different their versions of the story are.

Despite the above this was still a well written and engaging read, and further confirmed how much I enjoy Patchett’s non fiction.

Oh, my experience rereading this book was so different from my first reading ten years ago. Back then, I don't think I'd read any Ann Patchett yet--I'd read Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face and wanted to know more about her and how she died. Even though Ann was doing the telling, I saw this as Lucy's story.

Fast forward ten years: I've now read and loved three of Ann Patchett's novels and a fair amount of her nonfiction pieces. I'm a fan. Rereading Truth and Beauty, I'm much more interested in Ann's story, and surprised by how much of the book is actually about her. I think the story of Ann's writing life is as fascinating as Lucy's, in its own way--no drama, no self-destructiveness, just someone who gradually made her way from Friday's waitress to wildly successful author via talent, of course, but also sheer force of will and her willingness to engage, day after day, with the page in front of her--something Lucy, it seems, was never able to do. Of course, the book really is about both of them, a true portrait of their friendship, but for me, Ann's part in it assumed its rightful place on this reading.

The parts of the book concerning Lucy's drug addiction really stood out for me this time as well: Lucy's ex-boyfriend Andy, thinking if he can just keep her out of New York (where her dealer lives) she'll stay clean--as if Lucy couldn't find drugs everywhere else in the world. Ann herself desperately wanting Lucy to move to Nashville so she can keep an eye on her--basically be there to stop Lucy if she tries to go off track. Such common behavior among the loved ones of addicts. You think there's something you can do to solve the problem, but the fact is you can't do anything. I felt that aspect of the book much more strongly this time around.

Lucy's bad behavior was less shocking to me this time--probably because it was no longer new to me--but I certainly understand all the reviewers here who wonder why in the world someone like Ann would stay friends with someone like Lucy. To me, the answer is in this passage, one of my favorites in the book:

"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 even realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker."

Don't we all want to be lucky enough to feel this way? And once we did, wouldn't we do whatever we could to hold onto it?

no review no rating, as is the book club way. I will say I appreciated the erratic capitalization style of Lucy Grealy’s letters

"Truth and Beauty," by Ann Patchett is the autobiographical novel between the author (Ms. Patchett) and her friend for over twenty years Ms. Lucy Grealy (a fellow writer and best selling author of "Autobiography of a Face"). Like everything that Ms. Patchett has written and I have read, this is just another example of this writer's amazing talent.

Ms. Grealy, who lost part of her jaw to childhood cancer, chemotherapy and radiation is a poignant example of what is right and what is wrong with our society. Ms. Grealy, who has had over thirty surgeries to reconstruct her face and mouth, and to look totally normal is obsessed with men finding her attractive, and despite a number of boyfriends, and numerous sexual encounters she never in her mind achieves the attractiveness that will allow her to walk into a room and not be looked at as the one with the deformity.

Ms. Patchett is there for her friend every step of the way, through all the surgeries, insults, and addiction to drugs, as are a number of her other friends. But it is the friendship between the two authors that is at the very center of this heart wrenching, beautiful, and up close depiction of society's obsession with beauty. Highly, highly, recommend.

This is may be my favorite book of 2024 so far? She’s clearly such a gifted writer and I think she beautifully captures the complexities of her friendship with Lucy. The ending is abrupt and heartbreaking, and really stings.

I have mixed feelings for this book. My main feeling is that Patchett was always the more stable part of this friendship while Grealy was so flighty and self-centered. Patchette was always trying to build Grealy up and telling her she was loved, and not alone . . . It was kind of tedious by the end of the book. I realize that Grealy's cancer could have a lot to do with her inner feelings and her insecurities may have stemmed from that experience with all the surgeries, and disfigurement of her face.

I think one line from the jacket cover says it all - "This is a tender, brutal book about loving a person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and about being lifted up by the sheet effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest."

I only wonder that while Grealy was living life to the fullest, was it to the extent of burdening her friends with worry and grief over her drugs, despair, fame and love.

A memoir about the friendship between Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy. An unhealthy relationship. An odd friendship indeed. Depressing.

Awful. Both obsequious and patronizing. Touted as a memoir of friendship. But, sweet Mary, I would not want either of the women as my friend.

Lucy Grealy could be a challenging personality to endure after a while, as depicted here. A victim of cancer as a child, her face was disfigured and needed many years of surgeries to make it into a semblance of normal again. Along the way she met Ann Patchett and a long friendship ensued. Ann's love of Lucy with all her flaws -- her emotional neediness, her lack of responsibility, and her promiscuity, to name a few -- grew through their many years of shared experiences. To me it seemed a very one-sided friendship and Ann deserved sainthood because of how she gave and gave, and Lucy took and took.

The audio is narrated by Ms. Patchett. I am a big fan of many Patchett works, but this failed to impress me. I'm sure Lucy was a perfectly likeable person in her short life, and I am sorry not to have grasped very much of that in this book other than when I was being told about all the many friends Lucy managed to somehow have. What I did enjoy was hearing about the writers struggling to get a break, all their trials and tribulations and successes. When Ann and a friend both finished their first books at the same time, they stood on them to see how much "taller" the books made them. Loved that.

This is the true story of two friends, both authors, one being a favorite of mine, Ann Patchet, and the other Lucy Grealy. I consistently love Patchett's writing, she finds beautiful ways to describe things, so this book was a pleasure for me. It's the story of their friendship, of what it's like to be an author, of the expectation for life when you're an artist, what life will mean, and what meaning will be a part of your life. Lucy almost felt like a character to me, and I don't totally understand their friendship, but sometimes friendship isn't to be explained. Hearing the description of Lucy's life made me have an appreciation, if not sadness for her desperation to be recognized for her artistic contribution, and how much darkness she hid inside of her throughout her life. A darkness that eventually caught up with her. It was also fun to hear stories about when Patchett herself was starting out as a writer, and how different her process is from that of Grealy's. All in all if you're a Patchett fan I would recommend this one, although you have to have some patience for an attention starved artist if you're going to make it all the way through.