July 2007: Autobiography of a Face (Grealy) & Truth and Beauty (Patchett)

Post date: Jan 07, 2010 9:3:51 PM

Thanks to Monica for hosting 15 of us in her lovely sun-porch-living-room-with-a-view on Tuesday, July 31, 2007! We discussed Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy and Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, a pair of novels (yes, despite the title "autobiography," Grealy explained it was a novel, and she is a writer) about Lucy's life and Ann's friendship with her.

Considering autobiography as novel is a challenge: several of us had thought of it as an autobiography, and therefore questioned differences in her telling compared to Patchett's, and we didn't even explore the nature of memoir writing and how inevitably the writer sees the life differently from at the moment she lived it!

We did discuss self-image: the beauty Grealy sought in vain and the love she thought would follow; Patchett's success as a writer (we read her Bel Canto a few years ago) compared to Grealy's one book in her short life; the difficulty of Lucy's life as a child with cancer and nearly 40 grueling and invasive surgeries on her face and jaw, and her loss of hope and addiction at the end of Lucy's life.

Having two points of view on the same life made for interesting conversation -- some readers related to one or the other of the authors more, and the differing perspectives on the shared parts of their lives provided a broader view of what Lucy's life was like than just she, herself, could present. The discussion of the books led to explorations of similar experiences in our lives, such as how friends at Smith helped each other through life's challenges. Across the ages, most of the group was glad to have read the two books in combination even though it was a heavy assignment for summer!