Truth and Beauty by Ann Pachett

I have never read any of this author’s non-fiction, but I have read nearly every one of her works of fiction. I do not love her most famous book, but I have loved many of them quite a lot, and she is one of my favorite living authors. I was taking a quilting class recently and one of my fellow classmates mentioned that she was on the wait list at the library for her latest book (as am I—it was on Obama’s summer reading list for 2022), and that she had ventured into her other works of non-fiction, and really loved them. I got this book out when I was uncharacteristically doing some driving and wanted something to listen to. It is about the author and Lucy Grealy, a woman she met in college, but really got to know when they lived together when they were in Iowa City at the Writer’s Workshop in the late 1980’s. Patchett did not like Iowa City (foolishly, of course, because it is wonderful), but she forged a lifelong friendship with Lucy, and this book chronicles what that is all about. Lucy is a Ewing’s sarcoma survivor, which she had as a child, and like many such survivors, she had dozens of surgeries and hospitalizations related to her tumor. Unusually, the tumor was in her jaw, and so she was deformed for most of her life, which had devastating effects on her physically as well as emotionally. This book is not so much about that as it is about the deep and unwavering friendship they shared. It is a tender yet brutal book about loving someone that you cannot save, and yet are forever changed by them.