Blue Shoe

Rating:
Summary: His Blue Heaven
Review: In Blue Shoe, Anne Lamott reaches a new level in her already fine fiction writing. Here she steps into an elite circle of American writers who, with minimum strokes, sketch lives and articulate mysteries, while retaining warmth. A rare treat! (I really love this book!)

The plot: a mother (Mattie) and two small children (Ella and Harry) survive, build new friendships and repair old ones. Mattie seeks answers to her father's psychological abandonment, the meaning of a key covered in blue paint, and a toy shoe.

But these plot gears merely turn the larger wheels of inquiry. Why do lives unfold the way they do? What events do we control? Can we accept the passage of time and all it brings? Very moving answers can be found.

The book refers to time and weather so often that they become characters:
"...through the dark and dreary skies, sunbeams slanted, bright and operatic."

"sunlight fell on the mountain as though through a doilie..."

"The storms of winter began, tossed down by towering clouds and marked by sudden shifts of light."

Nature and the changing seasons reveal inner states, primarily Mattie's. Nature plays the part of fortune teller, illuminating lives, predicting events, setting them in motion. This rings true; often it is what we see, in grains of wood, or a shadow on the blind, that reveals us. Our perception is our reality.

Working in counterpoint is another personified character, the Blue Shoe. This toy, left in her father's old car, compels Mattie to investigate his life and possible indiscretions. She holds the toy for comfort, panics when it is gone. She passes it from friend to brother and back to herself as a talisman of searching. It comes to stand for the characters' desires. One could even see it as our blue planet, tossed playfully between Greek gods. In Christian terms, the characters literally handle their own fate through their choices. Thus the little shoe becomes a solid emblem, anchoring Mattie in the changing winds of circumstances, crisis and lost love.

The color blue is a central theme. The blue paint on a key leads to a horrible truth, and also to resolution. The sky, the sea, driftwood, interior spaces, and people's eyes are seen in various shades of blue. In addition to indicating sadness and pain, blue here also indicates peacefulness, even a sort of heaven, the divinity of past meeting present, the grace of healing and community.

Ms. Lamott's descriptions are gentle and knowing, but more muscular than ever. Often foregoing physical painting, she uses dialogue, movement or unique insight.

"'Eesa go?' Ella asked (about Mattie's elderly mother). Mattie nodded: Isa go, always go, going, going, gone."

"...Isa, tipping it back to take a swig, looked positively Austrian with rude good health."

"Mattie's father took the joyful parts (of the marriage). He drank and danced, stood at his bookcases looking up a poem that he loved, or stared off into space after putting the needle down on a new album on the hi-fi."

"'People don't carry people, Al,' she (Ella) cried."

"All they want to do is have a chance to raise their families!" he (Harry) cried (about rats in basement).

The description of her mother in the hospital is understated and touching. It reveals vague anxieties of changing roles, from daughter to caretaker:
"'Okay, darling, now lie on your side,' said the technician, and the kindness in her voice shamed Mattie."

Her earlier novels often rely on celebrities and current events to describe characters and to texture ideas. In "Blue Shoe" these references are mostly gone. I suspect this reflects Ms. Lamott's growing confidence in her stature as a writer of timeless literature. If that is the case, I don't think she should ever have doubted.

Some passages are so good, they even do for images what movies do for people's lives. Often a movie, with its music and visuals, surpasses the actual event in beauty and power. Some of Ms. Lamott's passages do this, as in her description of rain coming down a window, and other passages that are so delicious they almost make the real thing less interesting. Brava!

Ms. Lamott's style is easy (not to write) and smart; characters are honest and vulnerable. I am comforted and delighted by the people here. They are unique personalities: creative, quirky, flawed, in need of each other, and often very, very happy. They find palpable joy in books, meaning in bonfires, and grace from being together. They talk in their own (Ms. Lamott's) loopy language, often loaded with meaning, deliberate or not. They seek what 19th century poets called "congeniality," the spark of like minds meeting. Finishing her books, I am sad, as when old friends leave after long visits. I fancifully wish that Ms. Lamott will write one hundred more volumes about them.

Feeling so close to people in this novel, it is tempting to judge them. But it is important not to judge the book in this way. "Blue Shoe" is not about finding correct answers all the time. It is about how these souls landed on their particular shores, gazing back at the very blue currents that brought them there.

It is a book of wonder, discovery, living, aging, and looking back with fear and affection. And it is mostly about the awfulness of time, how it wears on us, takes things, clouds memories, fulfills destinies set in motion long ago. And then: how we can rechart our course if we surrender ourselves to God, in His blue heaven.

Questions, more than answers, define these characters, in their conversation, courting, and vissicitudes. As seven-year-old Harry says; "...when would the smell of grass that was coming up from the dirt be the bottom of the sky?" As good a question as the rest, the answer is thank you, Ms. Lamott, for asking them.

Rating:
Summary: Anne Lamott does it again!
Review: Lamott has once again translated potential heartbreak into a spiritual experience that defies the mere flesh. There is so much to love about this book. She hits the nail in the head when Mattie analyzes her parents' marriage. Did she follow her mother's pattern when she married her philandering husband? It's hard not to connect with a book that touches on familial love and reality during crisis in a way that captivates all who have watched a loved one, or parent, suffer the cruel and senseless blows of a failed relationship. Her signature poignancy cannot be missed.

As always, I find her styling and characters superb in their authenticity -- she once again demonstrates an unerring voice for dialogue and transmits emotion into a funny, moving account. Even though this isn't as memorable as Traveling Mercies and Crooked Little Heart, Anne Lamott hasn't lost her keen observations and ability to convey the same. If you liked any of her previous books, I guarantee this will not be a disappointment...

Rating:
Summary: Anne Lamott should be Anne Lament
Review: Anne Lamott's name should be Anne Lament because that's all her characters ever do. We enjoy reading about flawed characters because it reaffirms our own imperfections in life, however I can't stand whiny characters that never do anything positive to change their life's negative direction. Anne Lament's newly divorced main character makes a choice to fall for a MARRIED man while continuing to SLEEP with her newly MARRIED ex-husband. Hello, don't you have enough wobegone misery in your life already? Make some smart choices, don't get emotionally involved with married men, and don't read this book. It is horribly written. I just finished reading "Life of Pi" and the comparison between the two is astronomical. Pi good, Blue Shoe, bad. Skip it, life is too short to read about whiners who do nothing to improve their situation in life.

Rating:
Summary: Got Faith?
Review: Mattie Ryder is a middle aged divorced mother of two who loves her children, loves her parents, loves her friends, and loves her dog. She doesn't have a lot of money but she does have a lot of faith. Equipped with her faith and a little blue shoe, Mattie encounters events that will begin to change her life forever.

Anne's Lamott's new novel "Blue Shoe" takes us through experiences in Mattie's life from her point of view. We get to hear her innermost thoughts and desires as the episodes of her life take place. We get to experience her grief and pain as her aging dog Marjorie passes away as well as the joy she experiences every time she picks up and hugs her daughter Ella. We also get to sense her desire for Daniel a new friend she encounters during the novel. In turn we get to feel her need of forgiveness from God because Daniel's married to another woman.

We start off the novel finding out that Mattie is recently divorced and living in her parent's old home, her childhood home. We get introduced to a handful of characters including her mother, Isa, her son, Harry, and her daughter Ella. Her father is recently passed away and we get the sense from the very beginning that she misses him very much.

Blue Shoe is an assortment of plots brought together to tell the story of Mattie Ryder. Various stories fade in, out, and often times into each other to keep the readers reading on. Whether or not all the individual stories interest you or not, there's always the characters intertwined in the stories to tide you over.

One of these intertwined characters that keep popping up in the book is Isa, Mattie's mother. Once a proud and distinguished woman, her old age and ailing condition leaves her in an almost childlike state, needing medical help almost twenty-four hours a day. Through these episodes we see Mattie's determination and faith give her strength and caring as she sacrifices her time and money, to be with and care for, her mother. .

Another character with a high degree of faith is Daniel. Being Mattie's main male interest in the book wouldn't seem like a bad thing, except for the fact that he's already married to a beautiful young woman Pauline.

Then there's her recently deceased father, Alfred. Although deceased at the time we begin the book, we get plenty of background from Mattie about him to view him as an important character. Lamott captures the love of a daughter as she describes him through Mattie's thoughts. She relays the way that Mattie misses him every time she sees a picture of him, sees something that belonged to him, or enters a room that sparks a memory of him.

Lamott's book offers more than just a "snapshot" of a family. We follow her characters through their lives the way we'd follow our own family members through theirs. We see these characters at family occasions such as Thanksgiving, eating Turkey and dealing with family issues, just as we'd see our own. In reading this book you feel less like you're observing a family and more like you're a part of it.

Rating:
Summary: not very good
Review: I found that the book was easy reading and it didn't really have any point to it at all. I wouldn't recommend it. It just kind of dragged on and told the story of this woman's life and the events in it. The ending was really bad, too.

Rating:
Summary: Trying on the Blue Shoe
Review: I sat down with Anne Lamott's new character Mattie Ryder, and she let me know that it's perfectly fine to be flawed. In Blue Shoe, Mattie's life seems to be heading rapidly downhill with worn brakes. Mattie clings to her faith while everything around her, including her house, is falling apart. During the story I witnessed Mattie's journey of self-recognition as I followed her throughout her chaotic every day of raising two young children, coping with her failed marriage, and caring for her aging mother.

Mattie Ryder's journey begins where her marriage ends. Her husband, Nick, leaves her for another woman. So Mattie takes their two children and moves into the house where she and her older brother, Al, were raised. Coupled with the trauma of her life, being back in her childhood home awakens feelings of longing for the comforting love of her father, who has passed away. When Mattie comes upon a tiny rubber blue shoe, she begins to seek out the truth about her father's secretive life. Mattie finds solace in unraveling the mystery of her father's past. The blue shoe eases her stress, just as being near her father once did. Her love and admiration for him is where she begins to find peace amidst a seemingly never-ending cycle of disorder.

Mattie's relationship with her family rings true to many people with children, a mother, or a brother. Despite a shaky relationship as children, Al and Mattie have formed a friendship in their adulthood. Mattie dearly loves her children, and this is evident in the warm affectionate way that she breathes them in and looks at them as her treasures. Mattie's mother, Isa, takes on a variety of personas that define an elderly parent as the text unfolds. She ranges from times of helpless desperation to mean, overly critical periods taken out on Mattie. Al and Mattie do their best with the resources they have to care for Isa and her failing health. Anyone dealing with an aging parent can sympathize with Mattie's loving frustration. She admires her mother, but the novel portrays an honest mother/daughter relationship where, at times, Mattie envisions strangling Isa. This aspect only adds to the authenticity of the story.

Even though Mattie has her hands full with the condition of her family, the reader is reminded that she is still a woman with the desire to have romance in her life. When Mattie is feeling lonely, the reader feels her isolation. She copes with the feelings of ineptitude after being left for a younger woman. She develops a crush on a married man who befriends her which only complicates her already complicated life. Readers can identify with Mattie through the tender way that she secretly daydreams about her new friend.

Anne Lamott creates a wonderfully likeable character in Mattie Ryder. It is her many imperfections that complete her and make her real to the reader. Mattie becomes the friend that pats your hand when you are having a bad day and tells you, "You think that's bad? Listen to this." Anne Lamott's trademark wit, shown in her earlier nonfiction books, is echoed in Blue Shoe by all of her characters. It is especially apparent in Mattie's internal dialogue, as in the following excerpt when she is dealing with her son, Harry, in a stressful situation.

Boy, she thought, when Jesus said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven, He was definitely not referring to Harry. Maybe He had been misquoted. Maybe He did not say you must be like little children, but that you should eat little children-with a little butter and garlic.

The story presents you with Mattie's many complicated situations, and puts you right in the middle to experience her frustration. You can feel the smooth texture of the soothing blue shoe in Mattie's palm, and know that her pain will be eased. This novel will certainly appeal to single mothers who have to muddle through a difficult phase in their everyday life. But it also works for anyone who has had to get through a trying time. This story makes the disarray appear normal, and leaves the reader asking: What is my blue shoe?

Rating:
Summary: Blue Shoe Lacks Color
Review: Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe reminds me of a California version of Seinfeld, only with children. Both Blue Shoe and Seinfeld are about average people dealing with the minutiae and events of everyday life, including friends, family, parents, and relationships, and like Seinfeld's characters, Lamott's have strange qualms and neuroses. But while I like Jerry Seinfeld's adventures, I am not so fond of Lamott's main character, Mattie's.

There are three main storylines in the book: the decay of Mattie's mother, Mattie's love for her already married best friend, and Mattie's search for her father's secrets. Any one of these could have made an interesting book of its own, but Lamott gives them to us all at once. The book begins with Mattie recently divorced with her two kids and living on her own trying to make ends meet. Soon she develops a friendship with the man who comes to exterminate the rats in her walls and spends the rest of the book lusting after him. She also finds an old toy, the blue shoe of the title, amongst her father's belongings and becomes obsessed with finding where it came from. This search leads her to discover that her father had a secret life she knew nothing about. The whole time she still has to deal with the daily problems of her children and her career, not to mention fight with her mother who is slowly losing her mind to a mysterious disease but refuses to admit it or be treated for it.

The amazing thing about a Seinfeld episode is that the characters have their own stories but by the end they will all have intersected somehow so that the events of their lives seem, like our own, as a web. Lamott's storylines are like parallel lanes of traffic and just when we are becoming interested in one of them she changes lanes completely disorientating us until we stop caring about any of them.

And that is the main problem with the book. Lamott gives us so much information that we stop caring. The background she provides helps make better-developed characters, but it doesn't make them any more interesting. We see Mattie whine and cry over such small things that by the time we learn the truth of her father's secret, we feel it is meaningless.

Not that there aren't occasional moments when Lamott shines. The section when her dog is put to sleep or the misadventures with her pet iguana hold their own, but the main plots lumber along beside them and other less interesting sidebars only slow the progress more.

If you read this book, I suggest you start at Chapter 2. The first chapter merely contains background information, all of which can be found within the context of the rest of the book. Chapter 2 begins with the entrance of the important character Daniel, the man Mattie falls for, and introduces the blue shoe. I am convinced had I started here, I would not have had the time to become bored with the characters before the plot began. I'm not sure I would have been anymore entertained, but with a book like Blue Shoe, you take what you can get.

Rating:
Summary: Is it just me, or....
Review: ...is every single book Anne Lamott writes about herself and her family and friends? I LOVE her non-fiction, but the same people show up again and again in her novels, often quoting things she has already written in her memoirs. I have to wonder if Lamott is capable of writing any characters that aren't thinly disguised versions of people in her life, or of setting her novels anywhere but Marin County. She has taken "write what you know" to an extreme. A very disappointing book.

Rating:
Summary: 3,5 *** -- could have been better!
Review: BLUE SHOE by Anne Lamott

BLUE SHOE by Anne Lamott is a rambling story of a woman's search of her own identity and answers to questions about her childhood. It was my introduction to the writings of Anne Lamott, which came across to me as somewhat poetic and ethereal yet at the same time grounded in a dark reality.

Mattie Ryder is not having a good life. She's having a hard time letting go of her ex-husband Nicky, who she is constantly finding herself in bed with, despite the fact that he's living with another woman. She suffers consantly from depression, is barely making ends meet, and her relationship with her mother is not what she would have wanted. Her best friend is her brother Al, until one day she meets a man named Daniel at her front door step, who has come to help her exterminate the many rodents living in the walls of her house. Her life was "running on empty" until she meets Daniel, and together they form a bond as best friends and soul mates. It doesn't help that he is yet another man in a relationship, yet she finds herself falling in love with him.

In the meantime, Mattie's two children are adjusting to life without Daddy, and the signs of their maladjustment are everywhere. Harry is rather headstrong and demanding, and poor little Ella has already started to chew on her wrists to the point of bleeding. She is not even five years old. Mattie sees in her children many similarities to her own childhood, when she and her brother Al were neglected by their parents, both of whom were too busy with their own dysfunctional lives to see to the needs of their children. Al and Mattie go on a journey of discovery, as they slowly uncover the truth behind their parents and what really happened all those years ago. This truth tears them apart, and threatens to break away the little bit of sanity that is holding Mattie together.

Mattie and Al are also dealing with an aging mother who was once a feisty woman involved in nearly everything political and socially correct, helping those that were less fortunate than they were. Isa is starting to lose her memory, and her behavior patterns are driving Mattie up the wall. When in the past they weren't the best of friends, things were certainly not getting any better. The idea of putting Isa into a home is a thought that scares all of them, knowing how independent Isa had always been, yet Mattie and Al can no longer expect their mother to live alone without the fear of something bad happening to her. When they hear reports of their mother wandering the streets in her nightgown, they know something is terribly wrong. Isa, on the other hand, thinks they are out to get her and has no sense that she is ill at all. Each time they are at the doctor's office, Isa's mind is lucid and she seems to turn around miraculously. It's an enigma that has Mattie stumped.

While I loved the characters that Anne Lamott created in BLUE SHOE, I found something lacking. By the end of the book, there was no resolution to any of the problems encountered by all of them. Things were left hanging, as if there should have been a next chapter but it was missing. There was somewhat of a happy ending to an extent, if that could be said, but even that was lacking. I also felt that her descriptions of weather patterns could have been somewhat more effective, but for some reason I felt they were overly done. I know she was trying to use them to help show Mattie's moods, but they felt disjointed to me, as if they were not necessarily part of the story. Having said all that, I think the book was worth reading because of the fully developed characters and the story line. It was a complex story of a dysfunctional family, filled with dysfunctional friends and situations. I think if she had added a different ending, I would have been satisfied. However, at this point I would give it a 3.5/5 rating. It was good enough for me to prompt me to try another book written by Anne Lamott. From reading other reviews, this was not considered her best book, and I believe it. I can see the potential in her writing and I would gladly read another.

Rating:
Summary: What's with the blue shoe?
Review: I have read all of Lamott's books, fiction and nonfiction, and was a fan. I have to admit, though, this will be the last one unless she makes a leap in her writing. I have officially tired of her characters who screw up their own lives and then ask for God's help to unscrew them. The plot rambles with no resolution, mistakes are repeated obsessively, and the characters are stuck in low gear. If this resembles real life for readers then a word of advice ... you only get one shot at life, go out and live it! Yes, yes, yes, we all loved Mattie's honesty with herself but that serves no purpose if you go back and do it again. The mother daughter relationship was the only redeeming quality for this book. And what is up with that blue shoe? There really are so many books and so little time ... skip this one.