Small Victories

September 22, 2014
Lamott (Help, Thanks, Wow) returns with an essay collection that tackles tough subjects with sensitive and unblinking honesty. Her subject matter is often dark, deriving from the travails of aging and mortality that Lamott, who is now 60, has observed in recent years. Most of the essays involve people Lamott knows who are either dead or suffering from a terminal disease: her best friend who had cancer; her friends’ two-year-old daughter with cystic fibrosis; her mother with Alzheimer’s, to name a few. But even when considering these hardships, Lamott remains optimistic. Every essay offers a revelation, often tied to her Christian faith. Sometimes she drifts toward clichés, as when she learns, on a hike with a sick friend, that “getting found almost always means being lost for a while.” At her best, Lamott is refreshingly frank, admitting that she doesn’t want a passionate relationship as much as she wants “someone to text all day and watch TV with.” She also has the rare ability to weave bracing humor seamlessly with earnest, Christian faith, observing, “Jesus was soft on crime. He’d never have been elected anything” in an essay about teaching prisoners how to tell their stories. But the book’s best insights are subtle, like the thought, on a beach vacation, that heaven must be like snorkeling: “dreamy, soft, bright, quiet.” Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2014
Honest, witty essays on the hidden blessings in life. Lamott (Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Prayer, 2013, etc.) examines moments in her life when she has confronted her personal suffering and pain, drawn on her faith, and found compassion, kindness and the ability to forgive despite the odds against her. Many of the people who feature in these short narratives were dying from cancer, yet the author was able to extract quiet moments of joy from each relationship, and she gracefully imparts that feeling to readers. She delves into the complex bonds she had with her parents, who never made her feel welcome and implied that she did not turn into the child that they were expecting. Nonetheless, with the aid of her Christian faith, Lamott was able to find forgiveness. The author also discusses her alcoholism and the men and women who helped her find sobriety, her relationship with her son and her on-again/off-again bond with her brother. In each essay, Lamott makes evident the fleeting nature of life, noting how our time is finite and that if one searches hard enough, one can make the most of each circumstance-good, bad or ugly. Whether attending a service where the ashes of the departed stuck to her fingers as she attempted to throw them overboard, hiking the trails of Muir Woods with a woman who knew she was dying ("The worst possible thing you can do when you're down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends"), or demonstrating against the wars started by George W. Bush in a peace march through the streets of San Francisco, Lamott confronts each situation with humor and rectitude and shows readers how she found something redeeming in each one. Sage advice on finding beauty and happiness in life despite bad circumstances.

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Starred review from November 15, 2014

Lamott (Help, Thanks, Wow; Some Assembly Required) is one of the foremost liberal Christians writing today. The author has always been appealingly and even daringly candid about the particulars of her life: single motherhood, inner darkness and doubt, and alcoholism, as well as the vagaries of her personal life. As a writer, she is also perhaps the best popular essayist America has produced in decades. This collection brings together a range of heartfelt journalistic and spiritual writings, which have all the pleasures and accessibility, the humor and surprise, of her longer books. The only reservation is, given that the work is billed as "new and selected essays," more specific acknowledgements of certain essays' prior appearances would be helpful VERDICT A must for all Lamott fans and a fine point of entry for newcomers.--Graham Christian, formerly with Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 15, 2014
It is tempting to simply quote from Lamott's endlessly quotable essays rather than review them, especially when it comes to this much-anticipated volume of new and selected pieces. Lamott never fails to be irreverent, hilarious, thoughtful, wise, kind, angry, whip-smart, and cranky. In short, carefully crafted essays, Lamott writes about friends, families, community, and faith. Among other topics are forgiveness ( I naturally prefer the company of people who hold grudges, as long as they are not held against me ) and the death of a beloved pet. Her piece on dating in the modern world is classic Lamott: spot-on and as funny as heck, as is her essay on flying ( I am a skeptical and terrified flier ). Stuck in between a woman of uncertain ancestry (possibly part Latvian and part Korean, she surmises, who sounds like the Andy Kaufman character in Taxi) and a slightly older gentleman reading about the apocalypse in a book by a right-wing Christian novelist, she makes the best of a bumpy ride. This self-proclaimed sober, crabby, and bad born-again Christianpart storyteller, part stand-up comichas assembled a book that will delight and inspire both fans and readers new to her candid wit and wisdom.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)