Books 24 and 25

That's right dear readers, you're getting a two-fer today. I read the books separately of course (though one right after the other) but the two together only strengthen the stories and sentiment of each individually.

Book 24
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
256 pages in 3 days

Book 25
Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
257 pages in 3 days

Besides the fact that they're almost exactly the same length, these two books explore each authors' connection with Lucy Grealy's cancer (at a very young age) or the lasting effects of it.

Lucy tells her own story, focusing on her childhood and the endless parade of experiments that are done on her face. Lucy is diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma when she's very young - something like 9?- and has a third of her face removed. She struggles with recovery and then, for decades, with reconstruction. She suffers from warped viewpoints on beauty and love and sex that seem to eat away at her in a way the tumor never even approximates. Part of me kept wondering what her life would have been life, how she would have viewed love if her life had developed on an alternate path.

For Lucy, her face is forever the focus of the moment. It is the first thing at all times, with everything else in life (family, friends, men, poetry) coming in a distant second. She seems to see every experience in the light of her latest operation - is she on the mend or is she waiting for the cure?

Ann Patchett (one of my favorite authors) meets Lucy at the Iowa Writer's Workshop when they're both young and groundless. The two become fast friends and develop a relationship that speaks more to family than friends. There are ugly, terrible moments between them and startling truths that they seem to know about each other. They have a girlish love for each other which remains devoted and true despite all of the ups and downs they experience together.

Ann's portrait of Lucy (Truth and Beauty) is honest and painful. Patchett's novels are often palpably full of emotion and she always does a beautiful job of connecting you (okay, me) with the characters but her memoir goes above and beyond. You're there with her as she struggles to support Lucy and herself, as she struggles with success and fame and failure. My point of view is clearly biased (since I love her novels and I wasn't actually there) but her depiction of herself, of Lucy, and of the two of them together, rings very true.

These books are both fantastic on their own but read together, they're a force. Ann and Lucy compliment each other in story, writing style, etc. but their stories are made even stronger by the times when they don't mesh. The story is round and full and beautiful. Read them.