This memoir of Patchett's friendship with Autobiography of a Face
author Lucy Grealy shares many insights into the nature of devotion.
One of the best instances of this concerns a fable of ants and
grasshoppers. When winter came, the hard-working ant took the
fun-loving grasshopper in, each understanding their roles were
immutable. It was a symbiotic relationship. Like the grasshopper,
Grealy, who died of cancer at age 39 in 2002, was an untethered
creature, who liked nothing more than to dance, drink and fling herself
into Patchett's arms like a kitten. Patchett (The Patron Saint of Liars; Bel Canto)
tells this story chronologically, in bursts of dialogue, memory and
snippets of Grealy's letters, moving from the unfolding of their deep
connection in graduate school and into the more turbulent waters
beyond. Patchett describes her attempts to be a writer, while Grealy
endured a continuous round of operations as a result of her cancer.
Later, when adulthood brought success, but also heartbreak and drug
addiction, the duo continued to be intertwined, even though their link
sometimes seemed to fray. This gorgeously written chronicle unfolds as
an example of how friendships can contain more passion and affection
than any in the romantic realm. And although Patchett unflinchingly
describes the difficulties she and Grealy faced in the years after grad
school, she never loses the feeling she had the first time Grealy
sprang into her arms: "[She] came through the door and it was there,
huge and permanent and first."
-Publishers Weekly
