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Beautiful and Heartbreaking

Truth & Beauty is a non-fiction story about the friendship between the author, Ann Patchett, and writer and poet, Lucy Grealy, which was published in 2004.

Ann met Lucy in her college years. They became roommates, and their friendship was rock-solid from there on out. They both had a passion for becoming writers.

Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise very dull lives. We were better off when we were together.

On the cover of this book is an ant and a grasshopper. It's beautiful, but there is a deeper meaning behind these insects than pure aesthetics. In their friendship, Ann identified as the ant whereas Lucy was the grasshopper.

..but being the ant, I never understood the pleasure of barely slipping something in under the wire. I had spent the winter out west, methodically chipping away at my second novel, stacking up the pages at my regular steady pace.

Sometimes I worried that Lucy saw me as the ant I was, unglamourous, toiling...sometimes I aspired to be a grasshopper myself, to live in the city and go to parties, to have bright conversations with famous people instead of washing my grandmother's hair and making her grilled cheese sandwiches.

Despite their opposing personality traits, they had a bond that was inseparable.

Even when Lucy was devastated or difficult, she was the person I knew best in the world, the person I was the most comfortable with. Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy, I was a native speaker.

Despite Ann being Lucy's strength and vice-versa, Lucy had demons that she couldn't shake. As a child, Lucy beat cancer, which resulted in going through numerous rounds of radiation and chemotherapy that left her face disfigured. She always felt that she would never find true love. In order to fix her face, she underwent 38 surgeries in her lifetime, seeking one promising fix after the next, with no avail. When she was finally told in her late thirties that there was nothing else that could be done, she turned to using drugs and alcohol to ease the pain.

Ann was worried about Lucy but never felt that anything could destroy her friend because Lucy's body had sustained so much, and yet she kept going. She was a fighter.

She had a nearly romantic relationship with death. She had beaten it so many times that she was convinced she could go and kiss all she wanted and still come out on the other side...
Having survived 38 operations, she had become invincible. She believed that most basic rules of life did not apply to her.

One review of this book described it as a "grief-haunted eulogy," and I completely agree. Patchett pays tribute to her best friend through the telling of their long-lasting friendship spanning many years. It's tragic, unforgettable, and yet beautiful at the same time.

I loved every minute of this book and I'm grateful to Ann Patchett for sharing this story so all can know her brilliant friend, Lucy Grealy, who passed away of a heroin overdose in 2002. 🐜🦗