From the inside flap...

"What happens when the person who is your family is someone you aren't bound to by blood? What happens when the person you promise to love and honour for the rest of your life is not your lover, but your best friend?...Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and after enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshops began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work...A portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long, cold winters of the Midwest to surgical wards to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are interwined. This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and about being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest."

I enjoyed this book but found it hard to like or even sympathize with Lucy... wow - an incredibly needy person! I'm probably being too harsh based upon what she had to deal with growing up but, looking at pictures of her later in life as well as the success she attained and the boundless number of friends she had, I don't understand why she couldn't move past the "nobody loves me" place she was in. Ann Patchett must have the patience of a saint!

Sending off to chambejd as part of a book trade

Thank you! This beautiful hardcover arrived in the mail today from kathtee. Thanks so much for the trade!! I am really looking forward to reading this!

I loved this book. Patchett's writing is so easy to read and she tells the story so well. I would have found Lucy to be very tiresome had she been my friend. Patchett has a lot of patience. I'm really excited to read Lucy's Autobiography of a Face to see things from her perspective. I can only imagine how difficult her life must have been.

I finally mailed this today to msjoanna in exchange for Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Greely.

Lovely. I'm really looking forward to reading this. You can see my thoughts about Autobiography of a Face here.

I really enjoyed this companion to Autobiography of a Face. It was very interesting to read an outside perspective on Lucy and to read about the friendship between these two authors from the other side. Patchett's writing is easy to read and the inclusion of some of the letters from Lucy really brought the book to life. I know that the publication of this book was somewhat controversial -- some of Lucy's family felt that it was an invasion of privacy and inappropriate -- but I'm glad that the book exists. I would recommend these two books (read in either order) to anyone.

This book will soon be in the mail to xallroyx.

received for swap-thank!