While flying home for Christmas, I plowed through Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett. It's basically the story of a long and difficult friendship between the author and another writer, Lucy Grealy, the author of Autobiography of a Face (which I'm reading now, actually). It's a friendship that seems to sustain each of them through difficult times, but also is a source of stress and angst as well. Grealy was clearly a challenging person with whom to be friends. It's a portrait of female friendship, but a pretty dysfunctional friendship in my opinion. It's so all-encompassing, it can't quite be healthy. Therefore, the book had a sort of can't-look-away quality to it, because it was hard to imagine anything other than a less-than-perfect end to their friendship, one that could easily be described as co-dependent.
That said, it's a quick, powerful read, and is incredibly interesting for an entirely separate reason, namely that it really paints a picture of what it's like to be a twentysomething aspiring writer, as both Grealy and Patchett were during the first half of the narrative. I recommend the book to anyone interested in friendship--it may not be the most authoritative or heartwarming tome, but it is never boring.
Posted by waking slow at January 22, 2006 08:03 PM