Lucy Grealy was an author and poet and a dear friend of Ann
Patchett’s, ever since they were roommates at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. This homage to Lucy and to her friendship
with Patchett is very readable but not quite riveting. Lucy was a very needy person who just wanted
to be loved, preferably by a man, despite the fact that she had tons of very
devoted friends—both male and female. As
a child she developed cancer of the jaw, and her life was an endless series of
surgeries intended to improve her appearance and her ability to eat and
speak. She achieved acclaim as a writer
when she published
Autobiography of a
Face in 1994, but no surgeon was able to reconstruct her face satisfactorily. She suffered mightily, even having her fibula
removed so that it could be used to supplant her jaw bone, but the results were
never as advertised. My only complaint
about this book is that Patchett never gave me reason to love Lucy, who reminds
me so much of the character Jude in
A
Little Life. I empathized
with Lucy, but she squandered not only her friendships but also her talent and
her financial gains. Devotees like
Patchett were constantly at her beck and call—financially, emotionally, and in
person. I just couldn’t figure out why,
unless all her friends needed to be needed, and I don’t think that’s the case
with Ann Patchett, at least. Ann
obviously genuinely loved Lucy, partly for her mind, I suppose. One very telling incident in the book is
where Lucy went on a date with George Stephanopoulos after he answered her
personal ad in the
New York Review of
Books. She did not seem disappointed
at their failure to hit it off, but the question on all her friends’ minds was
whether he knew in advance about her disfigured face. She unraveled when someone actually asked
her.
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