Rating: 
Summary: disturbing, but not for the reasons you'd imagine...
Review: Patchett is unquestionably a wonderful writer. I'd told several of my close female friends that I couldn't wait to read Truth & Beauty and then found myself telling them, Well, I read it, but it's quite disturbing and not at all for the reasons you'd imagine...First, there is little balance. Ann Patchett keeps herself at a safe remove, yet serves up every detail of Lucy Grealy for the reader. Patchett perhaps thought, Well, for the purposes of the book the reader doesn't need to know this or that detail from my personal and/or emotional life. And I'd agree. But I'm confused as to why she didn't then extend the same grace to her friend. Reading along, you think, Well, okay, she's telling me about the most achingly private moments of Lucy Grealy's life, then she will certainly balance it with some bit of refection on her own inner life. To say to the reader: This too, is who I am: flawed, human. And here were some of my struggles with self-esteem and sexuality etc. And okay, maybe it appears I have a saint complex, but the truth is...Well, that's the problem: the truth is...? You have no idea. And you start to wonder why you are reading the book at all, because the absence of Patchett grappling with the questions the book calls up, leaves you feeling simply voyeuristic. In the end, I wanted less salacious detail about Grealy and more analysis of the friendship. More emotional truth. Second, though I've never read any of Grealy's work, it's clear that this was a tragic loss of an immensely gifted writer. Ann Patchett brought that home to me. So it was a disappointment that a portion of the book's proceeds are not marked for a writing fellowship or children's cancer charity in Grealy's name. To me, that would have been the true posthumous act of friendship, to have Patchett's writing gift help Lucy Grealy's spirit to live on in others.
Rating:
Summary: So many allowances made
Review: The thread in this book about the hard job of becoming and being a writer was interesting to me. The endless demands of Lucy were not. I have enjoyed Ann Patchett's novels, but this book just made me irritated at how invasive she let the relationship with Lucy become. I admired the circle of people who tried to support Lucy and stood by her, I just didn't understand how they could keep doing it. I don't mean to criticize, it's just that I had trouble seeing Lucy as a sympathetic character. I realize she suffered terribly due to her medical conditions but there has to be a limit to anyone's behavior. Lucy was actually only hurting herself but so many other people were constantly drawn into propping her up. I just didn't find it uplifting or inspiring or all that interesting to read about their struggle.
Rating:
Summary: Who was Lucy Grealy?
Review: This book utlimately disappointed me. I was unacquainted with Lucy Grealy and, at the conclusion of the book, I thought the claims for her immense attractiveness and charisma were not borne out.I felt that it should more appropriately have been written as a personal memoir and circulatad to those who did know her.I was puzzled by the pull she clearly had on all who knew her. They would understand. I didn't. Perhaps Patchett was too close to her or mesmerised by her to distance herself sufficiently to communicate to all of us who didn't know her just why this woman held people in such thrall. I felt sympathy for her suffering and medical problems and made allowances therefor, particularly for her self-absorption, but there was clearly more to her than that if one looks at the objective evidence of what people were prepared to do for her and the allowances they made. But it didnt come across to me. Her letters gave some clues (I haven't read her book) but the narrative was not persuasive in this respect. It seemed a fairly unilateral love match as friendships go. Was Lucy ever genuinely interested in Ann in her relationships or her success? It was unsatisfactory as biography (although I know it was not meant to be a biography). Lucy seemed to have been born into an isolated world. Where was her family? What was her relationship with them?
I will always read anything by Ann Patchett. Bel Canto is up there amongst my favourite books. As a fiction writer she is a master. I look forward to the next one, fiction or otherwise.
Rating: 
Summary: FRIENDSHIP BY ASSOCIATION
Review: This is an autobiography plus a biography of the author's best friend Lucy Grealy where these two met while attending college. The book is dedicated to Lucy who contracted cancer of the face while a chlild and had a multitude of operations to attempt to correct a damaged face. Lucy was always the life of the party and the leader of any social function, yet constantly worried of not being loved and being alone. She also worried about not getting male attention, though she had far more encounters than most of her friends/acquaintenances.
This is a well written, interesting book about living a life with a friend from two obscure authors (Lucy was a poet) who eventually hit it big and how their lives changed for the better, yet did not change Lucy's insecurities. A good read!
Rating: 
Summary: A friendship...
Review: Truth & Beauty chronicles the friendship of two women, Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy. What makes the friendship unique is that both women are writers, and Lucy is a cancer survivor that has endured years of reconstructive facial surgery. Ann Patchett is truly a superb writer, and leads the reader to craft images of friendship, devotion, and acceptance that stay in your mind long after you have finished the book. Despite Lucy's health, there is no pity in their relationship and Patchett is honest enough to admit that at times she envied Lucy. The beauty of Patchett's words can also be a barrier, and although the reader can believe the love the two women shared, it is difficult to understand or internalize. Ann's need to chronicle the friendship as yet another tribute to Lucy. Even planning to save their letters, betting they would be famous in the future, is more for preservation than financial gain. I did struggle with the book in that I found it difficult to understand why Patchett's love and faith in Lucy was so enduring. It is not disbelievable, in fact, the book does such a good job of making you believe it is true, you feel that you are being asked to take it on faith that this was a relationship that was joyous for Ann. Definitely worth reading, if only for Patchett's skill alone, but be prepared to be somewhat unsettled at the end.
Rating:
Summary: Not recommended for tender sensitivities
Review: Well written, strangely powerful and often horrifying. I can't quite recommend it. It's a special sort of pathology that many of us have encountered.
Rating:
Summary: a little too much
Review: What merit I found in this book was due almost entirely to Patchett's narrative style. The author of two of the books I recommend most often to my friends and even to random strangers (Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant) doesn't disappoint on that score in this -- what does one call it, a memoir?
But therein lies the main problem -- it's not a memoir, but it's told with too much almost-voyeuristic detail to be a respectable biography. I suppose that what it's supposed to be is a memoir of a friendship, as well as a memorial tribute of sorts, but it would have been better, in my opinion, as an essay, without spending what amounts to a large part of a book going into all the sordid personal details of Lucy's life and struggles. If someone writes about her own (appalling, really, in this case) promiscuity and drug use, you feel that she has the right to do so and that she's given you the right to read it -- whether one is interested in that sort of thing or not, she's putting the choice in the reader's hands. But no matter how close Patchett was to Lucy Grealy, the other half of the titular friendship, I felt like she was overstepping her rights, like she gave us Lucy's diary to read, without her consent. I enjoyed reading about the more innocent aspects of their shared life -- their inside jokes, for example, and their trials and successes as writers -- but it seemed like a page couldn't go by without a shot of the kind of details that I personally think would have been better kept between Ann and Lucy, especially since Lucy wasn't the one telling the story.
Chances are Lucy wouldn't have minded; obviously Patchett cared deeply about her and had reasons for writing about her life the way she did. Not being on the inside, so to speak, I obviously don't have anything to say about whether this story should have been written or not. But as a reader, a looker-on, I can say that I do wish I had left Lucy some respectful privacy. Had I known how deeply private this story was, I'd not have chosen to read it.
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