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2013 Book Review #107: Truth & Beauty
Title: Truth & Beauty
Author: Ann Pratchett
Genre: Memoir
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: The author of Bel Canto tells the devastating story of her best friend's life and death.
Thoughts: 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.
Author: Ann Pratchett
Genre: Memoir
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: The author of Bel Canto tells the devastating story of her best friend's life and death.
Thoughts: 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.
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