truth & beauty

I couldn't ever remember being lonely before, certainly not in this way, until I had seen the edge of all the ways you could be with another person, which brought up all the myriad ways that person could never be there for you.

I recently devoured Ann Patchett's (of Bel Canto fame) first non-fiction work, Truth & Beauty, the story of her 20+ year friendship with fellow author Lucy Grealy (The Autobiography of a Face). I have read neither Bel Canto nor The Autobiography of a Face, although both come highly recommended by various people who also read Truth & Beauty.

The book was first brought to my attention this summer by scoutfinch, who also found a great article that Ann Patchett wrote for The New York Times Magazine about women's friendships in Sex and the City. Scoutfinch contends, "Of course, any writer who loves SATC has to be good!" While I certainly agree, I was even more impressed by the fact that Patchett does not own a television. But that's just my own personal crusade.

Grealy is a survivor of childhood cancer, which left part of her jaw missing, and she spends the majority of her adult life in reconstructive surgeries. She and Patchett begin their friendship in grad school at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. They become confidantes and collaborators for each other as both try to achieve their dreams of becoming writers, although as Grealy, demoralized by surgical failures, becomes increasingly needy and demanding, the relationship is less and less reciprocal.

I loved the details of Lucy's adventurous personality. She buys bags of old Harlequin romance novels in order to paper the house's bathroom with their covers. She designs her introductory literature course with books she has always wanted to read and only just keeps up with her own assignments. Before a party she vetoes Ann's skirt as too short only to show up at the party wearing it herself. She memorizes the first few pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. She writes to Ann,

Dearest anvil, dearest deposed president of some now defunct but lovingly remembered country, dearest to me, I can find no suitable words of affection for you, words that will contain the whole of your wonderfulness to me. You will have to make due with being my favorite bagel, my favorite blue awning above some great little cafe where the coffee is strong but milky and had real texture to it.

Of course, those are the endearing quirks, but Patchett recalls all of her friend's peccadillos with equal affection. When Lucy's overdue bills accumulate past her stomach for them, Ann insists on sorting them all and paying as many as possible. (Where is my Ann Patchett?) Ultimately Patchett is unable to stem Grealy's self-destruction, and, as its cover states, "This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save."

Joyce Carol Oates's review in the The New York Times

blogcritics.org review