Rating: 
Summary: Cream for the Bowl
Review: OK, so I admit to feeling just a wee bit jealous of all the articulate individuals pouring cream into Anne's bowl of praise. I can't help but remember how much I loved "Rosie" when it first came out (and then went away for awhile before being brought back into print) followed shortly afterwards by an article (written by Anne) where she remembered being told by an acquaintance in a bar that they had hated it. I took it personally, I seethed with fuming, indignant resentment. I wanted to drop that ignorant, insensitive person on their ass in the street.
And how I didn't know until quite awhile later what had happened to Anne and her baby after her food critic article revealed a whole lot more than how delicately prepared the ahi ahi or what should really be done with braised mangos and salsa. I worried and fretted and wondered -- girl or boy, was she alone or in need or what?
It's like Anne and I and all the people that come alive in her work, that we come to know, imagined and actual, are somehow related, connected, family.
So I must confess, once again I wonder, am tinged with jealousy, and fret every day as the mail and/or ups person comes up the walk. Is she here? Is that you Anne? For though I haven't *actually read* "Blue Shoe" yet I find that I have already crawled between the pages like covers and feel warm, satisfied and blessed to know the people Anne will introduce me to. People I'll care about after I close the book and people I can't believe aren't real.
People you want to both smack in exasperation and hug with true affection.
SO I hope Anne's latest humanist, hilarious, heartbreaking and lovely work comes soon and until then I will feel relieved that the unappreciated author (at least by that one dolt) and sad food critic did so fantastically well and lived so happily.
Evermore, Annie.
Rating:
Summary: Messy, Likeable, and Totally Anne!
Review: I think I'm in love. Shhh, don't tell anyone.Ever since discovering "Traveling Mercies," I've been an ardent Anne-Fan. That said, I admit that her fiction has often read like thinly disguised nonfiction. She recycles so many of her own experiences through her stories that it's hard not to imagine Anne as the protagonist of every novel she writes. Sure, I enjoy her honesty, but I also want to escape into something new. "Blue Shoe" is something new. No doubt, we Anne-Fans see her shiny little face beaming/scowling/smirking/lusting through the pages of this book; however, Mattie, our recently divorced hero, is very much her own person. The story follows her attempts to reconcile life with God, her ex, her kids, her mom...oh, and the Evergreen man. Daniel doesn't want to be an Evergreen man. Mattie wants him to be her man. Daniel is married. And Mattie's still sleeping with her ex when he calls. These elements, linked with the startling similes and heartbreaking candor of Anne's prose, add up to her best fiction yet. She deals with so many elements of betrayal and loss, love and hurt. Anne's been there, and she knows how to take us there with her. She meanders, she lets her characters stumble through life, she expects us to follow along. If you have the ability to empathize with others, it's hard not to care about someone in this story. Anyone. Choose a character. They all have their faults; they all have redeeming qualities. I like truthfulness. I like a pimple on a beautiful face. I like to know that we are not all slaves to the picture perfect world our media tries to sell. Thanks, Anne, for smiling and writing through the pain. I'm still in love. With this great new book, others are lining up behind me.
Rating: 
Summary: jealousy is just so sad....
Review: i thoroughly enjoyed Blue Shoe, as I have enjoyed all of Annie Lamott's work in the past. there is no question htat she is one of the most gifted and popular writers living today - her record speaks for itself. what i do not understand is the venomous sacs of spider puke that seem to be hurled around on this one. could it be that there is a backlash to being famous and loved and gifted? oh, yes. i forgot. people who are suffering need to spread that around. well, I doubt that we would fling this kind of abuse if we were face to face with a person. cowardly, i call it. why not stick to talking about the book and not crucifying this woman who gives of herself unflinchingly and without guile? listen - it;s a novel, not a billboard. you donthave to read it or buy it. but if you do, listen to Jimmy Stewart: Always be a little but kinder than you have to be. Annie, you're the best.
Rating: 
Summary: I know she's a better writer than this book shows...
Review: I found this book to be depressing, and a disappointment after all the wonderful things I'd heard about Lamott and her other work. Mattie, the main character in this book, seemed to have no life and no aspirations to a life beyond her young children and sleeping with her sleaze of an ex-husband. I never got the impression that she placed any importance on working -- if I met her today, I'd probably tell her that if she would give some thought to what she wanted to be when she grew up, and then take some concrete steps toward achieving some goal, any goal, her life just might lift out of the morass it currently seems to be in. As a recently separated woman, I read this book thinking that it might give me some insight, but I really wasn't able to glean enough information about Lamott's protagonist to help.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: Tedious. Good writing does not compensate for a lack of plot.
Rating: 
Summary: Woe is me!
Review: If only her fiction could be as interesting as her non-fiction! I labored through this book, thinking it would eventually become creative, funny, inspiring, but it just never got there. It was just painful, preachy reading. Hopeful for the next one!
Rating:
Summary: Singing the Blues
Review: There was a lot here that I liked and a lot that seemed merely clever, something that I think Lamott has rarely resorted to in the past. So I came away feeling disappointed though I'm not sorry I read Blue Shoe. There were too many lines she gave to her characters that sounded like AA slogans instead of the way people really think or talk. I really liked the discovery and presence of the blue shoe and as a minister plan to get blue shoes for all of my congregants for Christmas. I also like the part about being imprisoned by people that you hate and praying for their happiness as a way to heal. But I often felt bored or impatient while I was reading and that has never happened with a Lamott book before, and I think I've read them all. A good editor would have been a blessing. Published before its time.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Disappointment
Review: I have loved Lamott's previous books and think she's a terrific writer, but could barely force myself to get through this one, hoping that there would be one character that I would find appealing. And I, too, got tired of being preached too. Lamott is entitled to her beliefs, but it seems that on almost every page there was some reference to something her pastor, or therapist, has said. I'm tired of reading about dysfunctional people. And while there is much truth in her feelings about caring for her aging mother, I didn't find it funny at all when she wished that she'd have a small stroke--only enough to get her to stop talking. I've always enjoyed her metaphors, but this too got tiresome, when there were what seemed like forced metaphors on almost every page. I've loved her earlier works, and hope that she can produce a novel without trying to force her religious beliefs on everyone. In an interview, she stated that she got tired of reading about people who had no faith. I certainly believe in faith, but don't need to have someone else's constantly paraded in front of me.
Rating: 
Summary: "Something to hold on to."
Review: Anne Lamott is an popular writer, immensely so here in Boulder, where she drew a standing-room-only crowd on her recent visit to promote her latest novel. BLUE SHOE is an uneven novel about unpredictable relationships that will appeal to Lamott's loyal following of readers. "Life was so strange" for her quirky protagonist, Mattie Ryder, "the weather shifting so often. There were warm, bright days, and days that were dark and quiet and cool" (p. 280). Recovering from a failed marriage to a philandering husband (Nicky), Mattie finds comfort in the passing seasons of west Marin County, her troubled children (Harry and Ella), her increasingly senile Mother (Isa), her faith and church, her older brother (Alfred), her friends, and a pest control man (Daniel), who doesn't like to kill anything. But at the risk of stepping on a few toes here, Lamott's latest novel is a disappointment. In her character's 291-page search for "something to hold on to"--whether it's a little blue shoe or another man (Daniel)--Lamott never allows Mattie the potential to realize comfort and strength in herself as a woman. Fiction and nonfiction alike, I've delighted in all of Lamott's books, including BLUE SHOE. But BLUE SHOE is not Lamott at her best. G. Merritt
Rating:
Summary: blue, who?
Review: Revealing the American family she stands alone but among the very good company of Updike and Tyler. She conveys pain and longing, exhilaration and acceptance like no one else. It flows from the page to the brain to the heart to the funny bone. Her writing is like breathing. It's authentic with hardly a misstep. With all her neuroses, I think I love her.
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