Book Review: Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

In the follow up to her book, Help Thanks Wow, Anne Lamott delves into a discussion of healing. A loaded and unwieldy topic for anyone to tackle, let alone in less than 100 pages, but as usual, Lamott delivers wonderful stories and advice with grace and humor.

The book is divided into six chapters, each dealing with the ongoing metaphor of sewing.  The slim volume starts off with:

"We live stitch by stitch, when we're lucky. If you fixate on the big picture, the whole shebang, the overview, you miss the stitching. And maybe the stitching is crude, or it is unraveling, but if it were precise, we'd pretend that life was just fine and running like a Swiss watch. This is not helpful if on the inside our understanding is that life is more often a cuckoo clock with rusty gears."

It is sage advice and Lamott's usual kick in the teeth, but a kick that comes from a loving place. The book includes stories from her own life, intermixed with coping mechanisms for navigating what can be a cruel and unforgiving world, where school shootings have been regular occurrences and natural disasters happen the world over.

The author never claims to have all of the answers and includes how she can best give God advice, but She never takes it. One of my favorite phrases in the book is toward the end during a story about a friend fixing curtains and teachers who drew her out of her shell in school: "This is who I want to be in the world. This is who I think we are supposed to be, people who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness."

And don't we all strive for that in some way? A friend receives terrible news and we offer soup, an ear or a stiff drink. There is beauty in helping, in repairing and in healing. Every disaster story includes the community coming together to help, to pitch in when spoons had completely been emptied. That's what we need to remember; by stitch by stitch, little by little, we come together to take that next breath and step, even when it seems utterly impossible.

Lamott delivers another treasured addition to her repertoire and much needed advice for this aching world in this latest volume of spry humor and loving words.



(Image Credit-Star Tribune)

Book Review: Help, Thanks, Wow

"But grace can be the experience of a second wind, when even though what you get is stamina and poignancy and the strength to hang on."

Anne Lamott's latest book, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers is a gem of a book. I already have a big literary crush on her and she renewed that again in this slim volume. The book packs more of a punch, being short, I think because she cuts it so close to the bone. The reader spends half the time laughing and the other half setting the book down and walking away because her words hit so close to home.

In the first chapter, "Help" there is one passage that hit close to home for me.

"At the same time, I didn't want to ask my parents for help, because they had so much on their hands. And besides, I was the helper. I was the go-to girl for everyone in my family. And ours wasn't a family who would ever, under almost any circumstances, ask others for help."

Oooof.

But as much as she seemingly knocks you down, she is there to pick you back up again. She is deeply religious, but still questions her faith and her practice of it. She doesn't let her God off the hook for much but recognizes her flaws as well.

This book is very similar to her other non-fiction titles: Traveling Mercies, Plan B and Grace Eventually. Reading this book as well as those makes one feel like they are talking to a treasured friend, who knows them, loves them and offers a lending hand whenever possible. The reader isn't preached to or talked down to, but offered a cup of tea and an ear.

I deeply appreciate her reverence and humor on a subject that is often difficult to talk about without having beliefs pushed onto an unwilling subject. This book is one to lend to friends and family alike.





(Photo credit: GoodReads)

Book Review: Some Assembly Required

"I remember thinking when Sam was newborn; How can this magical precious being produce such filth? I used to wonder if Sam was doing this out of baby spite, taking my glorious milk and turning it into such a foul product. And how could such voluminous waste come out of such a tiny vessel? It would be as if a newborn kitten shat a whole haggis."

No one can pack a whole world into a paragraph like Anne Lamott can, especially when she's writing about her family. Her latest book, Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, is a collaboration with her son, Sam Lamott. He was a college student when he found out his girlfriend, Amy, was pregnant and had decided to keep the child, a boy, who they named Jax. The memoir journaling, that readers were first introduced to in Operating Instructions, is back once again, only this time, Lamott is the grandma.

The book takes the reader through the first year of Jax's life and how the whole family, Sam, Amy, and Anne, struggle with the changes thrust upon them. Lamott absolutely adores Jax and states that "all [she] does is wait for another chance to be with [him]." She soaks up his baby scent and love, while trying simultaneously not to nag Sam and Amy to death.

The three adults go through a beautiful array of changes throughout the first year and per Lamott's wonderful writing style, she seemingly crams a universe of feeling into a few well chosen words. Most writers obviously choose words with care, but Lamott has made it an art form. While reading, the reader feels like she has drawn up a chair next to Lamott and is causally chatting.

A must read for any Lamott fans and for new grandparents, new parents, new aunties, new uncles and anyone who wants to read an amazing new memoir.

Photo credit: BooksAMillion.com