Who would believe it? A book review here on Di's Book Blog, etc. I refrained from doing reviews on the two prior books on my list because I didn't finish them due to my own attention span or busy-ness...not a lack of interest in the books. I hope to re-open them and eventually review them.
I am not sure how to review Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott. Anyone who knows me knows that I love Anne Lamott...especially her non-fiction. I started reading Lamott with Operating Instructions, her book about her son Sam's first year. At the time, she was a recovering alcoholic, former drug user and single parent. Oh...and a born again Christian...dragged kicking and screaming into faith. Whenever I tell someone about Anne Lamott and get to this part, I see them start to stare off into space trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation. You will have to trust me that she is like no other born again Christian you know or have read...or any stereotype you might have. She is the most irreverent Christian I can think of...she curses, makes parenting mistakes, candidly talks about her drinking days, her bad boyfriend choices, her quirky family and her thighs (lovingly called "the Aunties" in Traveling Mercies).
Reading Lamott's books from Operating Instructions to now makes you feel like you have personally been involved in Anne's evolution and in raising Sam. In Grace (Eventually) Sam is a teenager complete with all of the normal teenage defiance that makes moms crazy...Anne included. She loves Jesus...but even asserts that Jesus was probably a pain in the ass to his parents when he was a teen.
If I want this review to do anything, it is NOT to get you to run out and get this book. I want you to run out and get her non-fiction books and read them chronogically beginning with Operating Instructions. If you are a writer, you might like to also get Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. I think if you start with Grace (Eventually), you won't "get" Anne Lamott...and I REALLY want you to "get" her.
As always, Lamott had me at publication...but in this book she wrestled me to the ground and put me in her thrall on page 91, the chapter entitled "At Death's Window", the first sentence of which reads, "The man I killed did not want to die, but he no longer felt he had much of a choice." Whoa...not a sentence that makes you think, hmmm, I think I'll put this down and go to sleep now. This is clearly NOT a Bible-thumping, commandment-quoting born again Christian...this is a human who has faith but also recognizes that faith is a process, a struggle and not a moral absolute that can be attained by the perfect following of commandments or the literal adherence to scripture.
In a later chapter entitled "Chirren", she quotes a friend saying that "being a parent means you go through life with the invisible muzzle of a gun held to your head. You may have the greatest joy you ever dreamed of, but you will never again draw an untroubled breath." So this is not the Kathy Lee Gifford school of parenting. It's the darker side...the side that we wish didn't haunt our dreams and that we edit out when we are talking to anyone but our closest friends who love us unconditionally.
"Samwheel" is one of six stories that Lamott's son Sam allows her to write about. After a particularly contentious altercation with Sam, she writes, "We stood in the driveway, looking daggers at each other. The tension was like the air before lightning. The cat ran for her life. The dog wrung her hands....I felt a wall of tears approaching the shore, and without another thought, I got in my car and left." What parent hasn't exchanged those looks with his/her child? Who hasn't been tempted to leave when the going gets tough? Once your child gets to a certain age, who hasn't actually left...whether by driving away or locking oneself in one's room for one's own or one's child's safety?
Anne Lamott's books challenge my thoughts on faith, my thoughts on parenting, my thoughts on the petty daily struggles to be kind. She makes me laugh. She makes me cringe as I identify with her challenges. She makes me cry. I will leave you with a couple of blurbs from the back of the book....because those book reviewers can say it so much better than I can:
"...she's funny and she tells the truth, and truth and laughter are two things we need more of." - The NY Times Book Review
"For readers trying to live a kind of faith that's centered on social justice, who are saddened at the state of our nation and feel mired in a world gone mad with war and greed, Lamott and her quirky, funny perspective are nothing short of a salve for tired souls." LA Times Book Review
"Anne Lamott is walking proof that a person can be both reverent and irreverent in the same lifetime. Sometimes even in the same breath." San Francisco Chronicle
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