TRUTH & BEAUTY
Ann Patchett and writer Lucy Grealy met in college and began a friendship that would be as defining to their lives as to their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, written after Grealy's death, the story isn't about Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared. A portrait of unwavering commitment, Patchett's memoir spans twenty years, from the long 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 intertwined...and what happens when one is left behind. A tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save, Truth & Beauty is about loyalty and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.
“In her first nonfiction, novelist Patchett paints a deeply moving portrait of friendship between two talented writers, illuminating the bond between herself and poet Lucy Grealy...a tough and loving tribute, hard to put down, impossible to forget.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together.”