I didn't know anything about either Lucy Grealy or Ann Patchett before I picked up this book. I bought it because I thought it would be about one friend living in another friend's shadow. I liked the parts about the women when they were younger, trying to get published. I don't know much about what it takes to develop as a writer, so that part was interesting to me. But the book really started to drag towards the end, as Lucy became more and more difficult. It's obvious to me that this is a codependent friendship, with Ann and others enabling some extremely bad behavior on Lucy's part. Like other reviewers here, I just couldn't see what made Lucy so attractive as a friend, or what Ann got out of the friendship - it seemed like Ann was always cleaning up Lucy's messes, and Lucy didn't seem very concerned about any of Ann's problems or her victories. And am I the only one who thought it was odd that after Lucy's leg surgery, Ann carried her everywhere? Couldn't she have gotten a wheelchair? That's when I really started thinking that this was a codependent relationship.

I can't fault the book for the quality of the writing. Patchett is an engaging writer, and I'd like to check out some of her fiction. This book was just so sad and difficult towards the end, it is hard to separate the writing from the subject, so I'm giving it a three. Quite frankly I'm glad to put the book behind me.

This is a story about a symbiotic friendship. It's fascinating because it leaves the reader to question the meaning of friendship itself. It seems as if Ann gives everything and gets nothing in return. But I don't believe that. Lucy accuses Ann of wanting to be a saint. But I don't believe that either. Lucy breathed excitement and, to some extent, fame into Ann's life. Ann, who otherwise tended to "blend in" stood out when she was with Lucy - that was true throughout their friendship. Regardless of whether "standing out" was a positive or a negative experience, it was something Ann just couldn't/wouldn't do on her own. But the deeper connection Ann had with Lucy could be likened to a parent/child relationship. What do parents "get" out of their relationships with their children? It's certainly one-sided. Lucy clearly suffered from stunted emotional growth because of the cancer she battled as a child. In some ways she remained 10 years old forever. Ann felt responsible for her. And, she loved her. Who can figure out love?

I think Ann Patchett is a fine writer, and at first blush this seems to be a well-written book. But I wonder how such a fine writer could go on and on about her love and friendship for this Lucy person without letting me the reader know what on earth she - or anyone else - sees in her! Lucy comes across in this portrait as selfish, manipulative, undisciplined, and annoying - yet Ann claims to love her and certainly invests time, money and emotion into the relationship. Lucy, on the other hand, invests nothing. Oh, she keeps telling Ann she loves her, but she does nothing to hold up her end of the friendship. Allusions are made to Lucy's "words." Maybe that would appeal to another writer, but the reader of this book isn't shown any conversation that isn't about Lucy.

Had Patchett included some hints as to how she got drawn into this relationship and why she stayed, I think it would have been a better book.

What is a friend, and how much can one give to another? Can a friendship be sustained when one demands so much of the other? The answer given in this memoir is "yes".

This is a beautifully written piece that explores the remarkable friendship of two talented women authors.

Truth & Beauty is a memoir to Patchett's best friend Lucy Grealy, a fellow writer. They went to Sarah Lawrence together, but their friendship truly developed when they were at grad school in Iowa. Lucy had cancer when she was younger and it had left her face deformed. During the book, Patchett details the many many surgeries that Lucy would undergo in order to try and "fix" her face, she talks about their writing: the process, what inspired them, where they wrote; their love lives, their jobs, their successes but most importantly is the strong friendship that bound them together through the good, the bad, and the very bad.

This isn't a light-hearted, heart warming story, however it is a beautifully written tale of the power of friendship and how your friends can be your lifelines. Once again, Patchett has wowed me with her writing and I look forward to reading her other 2 books that I haven't gotten around to yet...

This is a sensitively written book about the friendship between the author and the complex Lucy Grealy, author of "Diary of a Face." What made it especially interesting for me was the story of the long road with its intricate twists and turns that finally led both of these women to be well respected and published authors. This book is a good permanent addition to anyone's library, especially if you like autobiographies, biographies or stories about writers and how they got there.

After reading Ann Patchett's tale of her friendship with Lucy Grealy, I kept thinking that if an alien, unfamiliar with the concept or practice of love, landed on earth and asked me for a book to learn about love, in all its intricate resiliency, this is the book I'd lend. We are none of us perfect, but we all can love and be loved and be better for it. What Ms. Patchett details with such unflinching honesty is that sometimes people come into our lives, complicated individuals who both entrance and antagonize us. Yet we love them, we can't help but nurture them. We recognize the fierceness and frailty of their spark and we do all that we can to keep it bright as long as possible. We know they love us too, even if only as they are able. When they are gone, we suffer the loss of their bright, flawed humanity. I imagine it took her memoir to make Ann realize how vital she was to Lucy as well. This is a painful, beautiful elegy. I recommend reading this first, then reading Lucy Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face". Kathleen Hamilton Allen, Author of "Change of Address" - a tale of Family and Friends, Faith, Fame and FortuneChange of Address

I only found this book interesting in the parts where the author is talking about the end of her friend Lucy's life.

I read this book for the first time because I loved Ann Patchett's Bel Canto. Not knowing what the book was about, the first reading was rather shocking. I have never read another biography like it. This second reading was for my book group and we also decided to read The Autobiography of a Face. They work like companion books, and Patchett was obviously picking up where Lucy left off. Her title is even lifted from the title of one of Grealy's chapters. She often echoes Lucy's sentiments about her many emotional and physical problems.

The two women were not friends during their simultaneous matriculation at Sarah Lawrence, but Ann knew who Lucy was. Theirs is a co-dependent relationship, with Ann as the strong one, the sensible one, the substitute parent, the big sister. All of her relationships, at least as persented in this book, play second fiddle to the all consuming one with Lucy. Lucy is a friend because she needs lots of friends. Her family is mostly absent through most of her serious operations and various depressions. Reading this novel made me wonder where they were. You get to know them a little better from Lucy's book. In both memoirs they are conspicuously absent a great deal of the time.

Lucy is a selfish, stubborn, artistic, free spirited, waif-like presence in the lives of those she knows. Ann is constantly amazed at how many people know and adore Lucy, and how all these relationships are maintained with the primary players rarely meeting, until they rally together to support Lucy in her more dire times of need. The reader may find Lucy's manipulative nature annoying; Ann finds it endearing. Lucy calls, Ann answers. Lucy beckons, Ann comes running. Lucy needs money, Ann supplies it.

The writing itself is admirable, and really very honest. I have never known anyone who suffered so greatly through so many operations, yet I am glad to not have known Lucy. Knowing other people who are ill, or have suffered makes me realize how something was sorely lacking in Lucy's life. She tried to be spiritual through her poetry, but her personal life lacked real relationships that were not based only on the concern for her own personal needs and not those of others. She wanted to be a celebrity and she wanted to be beautiful. She seemed to be elated when her book is finally published, but she never seems thankful for that in Truth and Beauty. She wants celebrity and fame and fortune, but at what cost to her and to others? Maybe that is why she finally turns to heroin, to fill the empty space in her life where she cannot have a real friendship without wishing it was "love."

Lucy's sister Suellen (not her twin Sarah) wrote a scathing article about Ann and this work in The UK paper The Guardian when the book was published, and interestingly enough, she admits that reading Lucy's book was very painful because she obviously knows how her sister can offer one point of view that doesn't necessarily reveal the whole truth (particularly about her family and their role in Lucy's life). She calls the book "careless." However, isn't that the priority and right of an artist? I wonder if they (the Grealy clan) were angry at Lucy when she wrote Autobiography of a Face, although Suellen claims to have been happy for her. She claims Ann "hitched her star to Lucy's" for her own personal gain. However, Ann was already well on her way to her own personal success long before writing this book. Bel Canto was more successful commercially than anything Lucy ever wrote. I think Ann needed to write this book, to come to some peace about her car wreck of a relationship with Lucy Grealy. She wrote about friendship, while Lucy wrote about her own personal pain and elusive search for beauty. Very sad. Worth reading.

This was an incredible book about friendship. Lucy Grealy had cancer when she was young, which resulted in several surgeries to remove parts of her jaw. These surgeries left her with a deformed face. Ann met Lucy in her early 20's. She immediately befriended Lucy and "felt chosen by Lucy and was thrilled." Lucy had a lot of friends. But it never seemed to be enough. Ann beautifully describes her friend in these words, ..."Lucy's loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity. If she emptied out Grand Central Station and filled it with the people she knew well, the people who loved her, there would be more than 100 people...If you added to that number all the people who loved her because of her book, all the people who admired her, all the people who had heard her speak or had seen her on television or listened to her on the radio and loved the sound of her odd little voice, you could pack in thousands and thousands of more people, and still it wouldn't feel full, not full enough to take up every square inch of her loneliness. Lucy thought that all she needed was one person, the right person, and all the empty space would be taken away from her. But there was no one in the world who was big enough for that. She believed that if she had a jaw that was like everyone else's jaw, she would have found that person by now. She was trapped in a room full of mirrors, and every direction she looked in she saw herself, her face, her loneliness. She couldn't see that no one else was perfect either, and that so much of love was the work of it. She had worked on everything else. Love would have to be charmed." To me, this described Lucy the best. I commend Ann for being such a great friend. I am not sure if I would have the patience to be a friend to someone as hard on life and on love, as Lucy. Very moving. I would never had read this if it wasn't for book club. I am so glad I did. I am going to add "Autobiography of a Face" to my wishlist.

I read this book thinking I would be reading an inspirational story about a friendship between two authors. Instead, I read a book about a needy, childlike woman(acting more like a girl)who took everything she could from the author and everyone she befriended. While I fully empathize with her disfigurement, I think Lucy Greeley used this as an excuse to not mature and take responsibility for her own life. Ann Patchett must be a masochist because she allowed (in fact, enabled) Lucy to act however she wanted with no consequences. This was not a friendship between two women, this was caretaker and a user feeding off of each other. That is hardly inspiring, beautiful or worthy of a tribute!

I also found it hard to believe that these two women desired to be writers. They looked for every possible distraction in their lives to avoid writing, even when they were at the retreats they sought so hard to be admitted to. I understand an occasional writers block but these people seemed to want to do anything but write.

I was completely uninspired by either of these women after reading this book.

Ann Patchett is one of my favorite authors. She is so intelligent, and her usage of language is remarkable. I was so intruigued with this story that I went on to read more about the real Lucy Grealy.

Ann Patchett has done a wonderful job of capturing the essence and joy of loving another human being, whether that be of a child, a romantic partner, or a best friend. She shows us with warm and illustrative descriptions how, as illogical as it may seem, we can love someone not just "in spite of" but perhaps because of their short-comings. The reader comes away feeling that s/he too can be loved regardless of any imperfections, real or perceived.

On a different note, I was particularly struck with Ms. Patchett's analysis of how having a changing face could profoundly affect one's sense of identity. The inability to reconcile with a particular appearance (whether that be beautiful or ugly) must be profoundly disconcerting.

the most compelling work I have ever listen to. It's reading by the author added to it's beauty.

Clearly the author loved Grealy...what is unclear is whether Grealy returned that love or was a manipulative user. I found few redeeming qualities in the person described by Patchett and found myself a bit disgusted with Grealy's cavalier treatment of all and sundry, including her refusal to pay off any debts she incurred in the course of her life. The final straw came when I read her reaction to 9-11. I wanted to send her drug-abusing self back to Ireland and let its citizens support her.

In doing more research, I see that her twin sister is angry with Patchett for hijacking the Grealy family's grief. I find that equally offensive. It seems the entire family shares an *all about me* gene.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book. It is a tale of a narcissist enabled by friends and family who led a chaotic and not particularly productive life (at least by professional writer's standards) who finally found a lover in heroin that wasnt as forgiving as the people in her life.

Following Lucy and Ann through the course of their lengthy friendship is a true journey, through book deals, surgeries, and addiction. Overall, Patchett offers a first hand view of an intense friendship with a woman who is constantly struggling with her self-worth, whether it be physical appearance or sexual attractiveness. Lucy's endless questioning of herself left me tired and I commend Ann for sticking through it, and being a best friend through the thick and thin.
If you have ever thought you had a friendship worth writing about, take a look at this memoir and be dazzled by the love.

I agree entirely with Jonah. Other readers have missed the point, and are overanalyzing, in my opinion. Who can explain the mystery and connection of true friendship, or marriage? This book is about truth (and deception), beauty (and ugliness), and the richness and complexity of life.

Truth & Beauty is a brilliant work. Patchett's delicate and thoughtful choice of words is as artful and as interesting as the lives about which she writes.

The writer Anne Patchett was the poet Lucy Grealy's best friend. After Grealy died, Patchet wrote "Truth and Beauty" as a testiment to their friendship and to Grealy's life-long struggle with her deformity from facial cancer. "Truth and Beauty" is a fascinating glimpse into the lives of two amazing writers, and an expose of the meaning of true friendship. It is especially interesting to read together with Lucy Grealy's book "The Autobiography of a Face." Everyone that I have lent my copies of the book to has agreed that they are the read of a lifetime.

Ann, an aspiring writer, knew of Lucy, an aspiring poet, when the two of them were students at the same college. Actually, everyone knew of Lucy. She was the one who'd had cancer as a child and whose chemotherapy treatments had left her with a severely disfigured face that continued to need surgery after surgery until the end of her life.

Lucy was mistreated by her peers when she was a child, but it seemed that for the rest of her life everyone was trying to make up for that cruelty. She was cheered for and spoken to warmly wherever she went, despite the fact that she seemed to have few redeeming qualities that would make her so popular. Even Ann admits that she followed the gossip about Lucy's medical condition and she felt close to her even when Lucy had no idea who Ann was.

Ann couldn't be more delighted when Lucy decides to move in with her after college. She continues to be thrilled and grateful for the rest of Lucy's life, as Lucy drifts through existence, needing constant reassurance that people loved her, that she was beautiful and talented. She also needs money, and someone to clean her apartment, and someone to do her bidding after her surgeries. That person is always Ann, who seems to simply accept that this is the way their relationship should be.

I was confused. How could an intelligent, educated person allow herself to be treated so poorly? What was Ann getting out of this relationship that I couldn't see? Or was it simply that she befriended someone prone to depression and suicide attempts, so she felt she couldn't drop Lucy without putting her life in danger? Ann is a much better friend than I could ever imagine being; I would have stopped speaking to Lucy after about the fiftieth page.

Reading through previous reviews, many people have pointed out: (a) Lucy was a selfish person (b)Ann must have had some problems to put up with it. What these people are missing is that in a true friendship, you have to accept the totality of the other person's character because your love for them necessitates it. This is one of my favorite books because it reminds me of my relationship with my best friend. We both have Lucy and Ann characteristics, and we both lend each other the splendor of our lives when the other needs it. Don't read the book as a moral/ethical novel, but as a window into a beautiful and fruitful friendship. Lucy and Ann may have respectively had a few problems, but who doesn't? It is the way that they connect the moments of life together in their writing that is important here.

I read and reread this book. To be frank, it gave me the creeps. Ann and Lucy have a weird, co-dependent relationship. Ann is clearly obsessed with Lucy, an obsession that began when they lived together in graduate school. Even after they moved apart, the obsession continued. Ann and Lucy dated men, but the two women enjoyed a deep bond--a bond so deep that that Ann seemed "depressed" when they were apart--and Lucy fell into a series of promiscuous relationships with men.

Their friendship, as deep as it was, had lesbian overtones. Oddly enough, the "L" word does not come up in this book. Three of my straight girlfriends who read this book wondered about the implied bisexuality. We could not agree whether it was emotional, psychological, psychic, or physical. The details are hazy. Where is Lucy's side of the story?

I recommend the book, but wish it were a little more forthcumming about certain details.

Superbly written book that explores the creative responses to eternal issues of loneliness, vocational and personal success, and love. Quite inspiring in its realness and emphasis on the choices people make.

Lucy and Ann are the best of friends. They even share a twin bed together. Ann gazes at Lucy during long, leisurely, naked baths. Ann does Lucy's bidding, whatever the personal or financial cost. I was shocked by Lucy's demands--and more shocked by Ann's willingness to comply, like a leashed dog.

I kept expecting Ann to go down on Lucy, what with all the kissing, sleeping together, and long, hard stares. This book reminded me of the art house film 9 and half weeks, except for the fact that in this case the portagonists are both females.

I appreciate Ann Patchett for having created this work and for having shared it with the rest of us. With words, she made a portrait of pure friendship--really, a sacred love that I believe Ms. Patchett experienced as a gift during her lifetime.

I saw myself in Lucy and in Ann and recognized the truth and the beauty that appear when a heart is open to see--I mean really see. Love Love Love this book. Heaven knows we can benefit from a story that teaches something about love and friendship that is possible even if the participants are (gasp) imperfect humans. Lucy Grealy experienced a truthful and beautiful friendship during her lifetime, and that cannot be stated as the case for all people.

This is one of the most achingly well written books I have read on a lesbian-like dominant-submissive relationship. Too bad neither the author nor her "pet" are willing to acknowledge the "truth" about their relationship. The truth is written all over the book. This book should be read alongside other more explicit works of its genre.

Sorry readers but slogging through this "tribute" to friendship was about as enjoyable as a root canal. Where to begin? The first thing that comes to mind was "what a sick mess of a relationship". You can sum it up in a nutshell something like this. Lucy to Ann .... "You will, pay my bills, clean my pigsty of a house, do all my bidding however outrageous, lavish me with attention, declare your love.., in turn I will, ignore you at will, rarely deliver anything as promised, drop you for a better gig at a moments notice, take no responsibility for anything and use you for everything you've got... Ann to Lucy "Yes pet!" Lucy comes off as petty, self-absorbed, spoiled and plain obnoxious minus half a face or not. Ann is a classic enabler, you can't help but pity her. Like other reviewers I took issue with the author revealing every sordid detail about her dead friend while telling us nothing of her own shortcomings. Although ultimately I suppose this novel itself speaks volumes about the author's many flaws.

I think the author is in denial.

At least that was the consensus of my reading group. No offense to the author--her sexuality is no one's business but her own, unless of course she chooses to write a sexually suggestive memoir such as this--but why did Ann have such a one-sided relationship with Lucy? Why was she constantly pursuing Lucy? Some people have suggested that there was a Lesbian character to their relationship. I really can't say---but how many adult women profess their love for each other--and share the same bed?

I would go a step further than some of the reviewers below in suggesting that Lucy and Ann had a classical dominant-submissive relationship, with Lucy serving as the dom, and Ann as her sub. The evidence is all over the book. Lucy is constantly demanding something from Ann, ordering her about, treating her like a dirt ball. Ann, perhaps because she was attracted to Lucy, does her best to comply. Even the title of the book sounds like the title of a dom/sub treatise.

I would recommend this book to anyone seeking further insight into the strange relationship of two literary women.

Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy shared a close and unique friendship, which Ann chronicles in this book. They met in college in 1981 and thereafter kept in close touch whether they were living in the same place or not. Lucy had undergone surgery to remove the cancer that was growing in her lower jaw and then spent large amounts of time in the hospital with chemotherapy, radiation, and reconstructive surgery. The chemo and radiation succeeded in keeping her alive, but the reconstructive surgery was not as successful. She endured taunts from her classmates and survived by assuring herself that she was a more superior person than her tormenters. Underneath all of this was a terrible insecurity, begun in a dysfunctional family, in which Lucy considered herself to be unlovable. This caused her to exhibit a terrific clinginess and deep need for assurance which exhausted her friends. Ann was with Lucy during hospitalizations and periods of depression in the early years, and later she suffered through Lucy's up and down relationship with drugs. This book shows how deep friendship can go and how devoted one person can be to another. It is probably better read as a sequel to "Autobiography of a Face", Lucy's own account of her inner and outer struggles.

This memoir is about the friendship between two woman writers, the novelist Ann Patchett and the poet/memoirist Lucy Grealy. I randomly picked this up from my neighborhood cafe book exchange and loved it. I immediately vowed to find Patchett's novels, which is not always a response I have when I read a memoir I like, as I have not bothered to pick up novels by, say, Anthony Bourdain or Augusten Burroughs. Perhaps the difference is that in the latter two cases, the personality of the author and the milieu is half the charm, whereas the virtues of Patchett's book, which lie not just in the prose (which is excellent) but in the depiction of relationships and a character portrait of someone other than the author, would seem to translate more easily to a novel. So I was pleased to discover that I already had Patchett's The Magician's Apprentice, which I have no recollection of buying.

I had earlier read Grealy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face, which is about her diagnosis of jaw cancer at the age of nine, her horrifying and lengthy treatment with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery that removed much of her jaw, and of her experience growing up with a disfigured face. Though it was quite poetically written and the chemotherapy descriptions in particular were almost unreadably vivid, I had hoped for more of a sense of the author as a person, or more discussion of her experiences as an adult, or something-- it read to me as if large sections were missing or opaque.

When Patchett and Grealy meet in college, Grealy is famous on campus, for her talent, her charisma, and her tragic and dramatic life story-- much of her jaw is missing, she has undergone repeated unsuccessful surgeries to repair her face, and she suffers numerous health and living problems because she can't chew or swallow properly. Patchett is a bit of a nobody. But they end up becoming roommates, and bond instantly in the way that people do when they suddenly meet someone they can talk to about everything they always thought no one else could understand, and with whom the conversation flows. Besides that, they have chemistry. Though there are erotic elements in their relationship, at least in my view, what they mainly have is a friendship that's as lasting and passionate as a lifelong love-affair. In a sense, it is a lifelong love affair.

Oddly, reading the book convinced me of three things: that Patchett really did love Lucy and wrote the book out of love and grief after Lucy's death, that the book is honest to the best of Patchett's ability, and that though I have a lot of sympathy for Lucy Grealy, I don't actually find her likable. She comes across as needy, self-centered, a drama queen, and a bit of spoiled brat who never grows up. Granted, she had a lot to bear and reasons she was the way she was, but still. Patchett does her best to get across Lucy's personal charisma, but it's tough to fully portray a quality that's often solely in a person's aura and not in their words or deeds. Patchett herself is more in the background, but sees herself as the plodding ant to Lucy's charmingly feckless grasshopper.

But the relationship between the two of them comes across beautifully. Lucy loves to be taken care of, and Ann Patchett loves taking care; it's co-dependent, but it's also real love. This is a great character portrait, and a brilliant portrayal of a relationship that on one level makes no sense and on other levels seems inevitable and natural.

I was so curious about the background of the book that I looked it up, and found the swirl of intense and mixed feelings that so frequently surround memoirs: Lucy Grealy's sister is furious with Ann Patchett for writing a book that tells all about Lucy's less-than-stellar qualities, for priveleging her own grief above the family's, and for exposing the family to unwanted fame; readers here on Amazon note that Lucy was a bitch who brought everything on herself, or else accuse Patchett of not coming clean about the clearly lesbian nature of the relationship, of cashing in on a dead friend's memory for money, of being a doormat, of allowing Lucy to die (of a drug overdose) through her failure to apply tough love, of making Lucy look bad, of deliberately making Lucy look bad out of spite or jealousy, and of failing to give the proceeds to cancer research; and other readers defend the book at some length.

I wondered, when I read all that, if Ann Patchett hoped that readers would see Lucy as she saw Lucy-- infuriating, irresponsible, but impossibly charming-- and would love her too, and if she was saddened that a lot of them didn't. I wonder if she wishes she'd exposed more of her own flaws for balance, or softened Lucy's. Or if, when she was writing, she left nothing out because it never occurred to her any number of flaws could prevent anyone from loving Lucy.

By the end of this book, I felt as though Patchett had written it half as a tribute to a fellow artist she admired, and half as a way of getting even with a "friend" who had treated her like dirt most of the time.

Patchett gushes in this memoir about how much she, and apparently everyone else they knew, "loved" Lucy outrageously, yet there is hardly one story about Lucy that presents her as a likeable (let alone lovable) person. Hmmmm.... Patchett The Doormat does whatever Lucy wants, never talks back, never says no... then goes on to tell the world about all of Lucy's appalling behavior. Hmmm. Most of the positive things she says about Lucy are about her writing, and by the end, even that starts to seem like "yeah, but she was an amazing writer."

It seems to me that Patchett never got beyond her awe of Lucy that started in college, continuing through adulthood to be "flattered" that Lucy gave her the time of day. Lucy the Grasshopper seems to mirror everything Ann the Ant wanted to be, and like a good neurotic, Ann needed to know (ironically, in Lucy's words), that Lucy "loved her best." Why else would someone put up with 20-odd years of abuse? But I sense that somewhere in her heart of hearts, Ann always knew she was getting the short end of the stick, and perhaps by writing this (admittedly enthralliing and well-written) book, she got hers.

Ann and Lucy were infatuated with each other. As graduate students at the University of Iowa, they lived together in an intense,passionate relationship. True, they both saw men, but what is the reader to make of Lucy crawling into bed with Ann, leaping into her arms, sitting on her lap, and(endlessly) asking her if she "loves her best." Is this a platonic friendship?

Although the L word doesn't pop up in this book,I think it's reasonable queston to ask----and a reasonable question for any reader of this memoir. what exactly was the nature of their relationship? Why did Lucy never marry? Why did Ann end her marriage after a few years of trying it out? Why did they never quite lose their sense of intimacy?

Ann doesn't answer many of these questions---or glosses over them as if they would not even occur to the reader. At first I thought she was just a novelist trying to write in an unfamiliar medium. Then I wondered if she had something to hide. I still don't know.

The first part of this book dealing with Ann's early encounters with Lucy left me puzzled. The lesbian overtones were confusing. Ann and Lucy occupy the same bed, Lucy kisses Ann with wild abandon; they live together joyously until Ann leaves her to move in with man she later marries. After a very brief marraige she is on her own again--and once again "pursuing" Lucy's love, affection, and approval. By Ann's own accounts, Lucy is extremely jealous of her other relationships.

Ann's love of Lucy is clear throughout book. Less clear is where she drew the line.

This book reminds me of a 1950s lesbian pulp novel where the protaganists meet, fall in love, marry men, but remain lifelong intimate friends. This is a work of nonfiction, but I believe the analogy is still valid.

Ann writes at length about Lucy's serial relationships with men. But you have to wonder whether Lucy's love of Ann was more than just a platonic friendship. Why? Well, from Ann's own descriptions, Lucy loved her in the extreme. So much so that she jumped in her arms, sat on her lap, slept in her bed, kissed her (ON the lips).

All the while, I kept wondering: what does Ann get out of this relationship? She reminds me of an addict, constantly returning to the source of her love, her joy, her anguish, her pain, her compulsion.

The question is which is which? Read it and decide. Lucy and Ann share an intimate friendship, so intimate that I wondered throughout the book whether it had a lesbian content, active or subliminal. Lucy never married and was unusually fond of Ann; a fondness, which, from Ann's descriptions, often had a physical (though not necessarily sexual) expression. True, Lucy has promiscuous sex with men. But what is the reader to make of her affection for Ann--an affection that expressed itself in naked baths, "spooning" in bed, kissing? . . . Again, it's up to the reader to figure out what's what in this perverse friendship.

As many other readers have noted, I couldn't understand what Ann saw in Lucy.