Anne Lamott: Travelling Mercies
If you want to be amused and informed as a writer, read Anne Lamott, and If you want to write a memoir, be sure to read this book.
Here is a review of this book from another blog I maintain:
Most of you who write are familiar with Anne Lamott. If not, you should be. She wrote a wonderful book, Bird by Bird, that is often used in writing courses in colleges and universities. I stumbled across another of her books, Traveling Mercies, while looking for more of her writings. This book is a wrenching, soul-bearing, honest-to-God experience. From her upbringing by a beloved atheist father and an agnostic mother, to her frequent use of the “f” word, it covers her years’ long conversion to Christianity. Jesus chased her up mountains, down to the seashores, through births and deaths of loved ones, through self-hatred, promiscuous sex, drugs and alcohol. Jesus was thatHound of Heaven that the poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins, speaks of in his poem by the same name.To get the full impact of this book you must read every word of it. There are some pages that will rip your heart into shreds. Other pages will bring on a viscera .reaction in your gut, and in-between those emotional reactions, you’ll be laughing at her wit/wisdom. Go ahead. Buy the book. Or ask for it in your local library. If they don’t have it, they’ll order it for you. You too will then laugh, feel, experience,and live in the life of this remarkable writer.
Posted by stargazer12 | Filed under Uncategorized
