Blue Shoe

You might very well already know that Anne Lamott is one of my favorite authors.  I’ve read all of her books of essays about faith, and the one about writing, and now two of her novels.  Her memoirs are insightful, provocative, and hilarious. (See my reflection on one here.)   Her novels, while they don’t live up to her non-fiction, are still quite well-written.

Blue Shoe is about Mattie, a 30-something, divorced mom of two who is struggling with her mother’s declining health, her dead father’s sordid past, her ex-husband’s new wife and baby, and her crush on a married man, among other things.  It’s a story of everyday things, really, though there’s a bit of romance thrown in.  The ending is hopeful, but not unrealistic.

The first thing I noticed as I began Blue Shoe was all the similarities to Lamott’s own life.   The other novel I’ve read, Rosie, also had a lot of autobiographical elements.  At first this annoyed me, but now I’m not as sure that it’s a problem.  (You’re supposed to write what you know, right?  It worked for Anne of Green Gables.)   Like Lamott, Mattie is a single mom, a Californian, a Christian, and has a strong circle of support that includes both family and friends who are as close as family.  Like Lamott, Mattie lives a messy life with a roller coaster of emotions.  Perhaps it is these similarities to Lamott’s own life that makes the book feel quite intimate much of the time.  For example, another struggle in the book is the decline  and eventual death of the family dog, Marjorie.  The moments as the children slide under the bed to lie next to her, as the dog passes horrible gas, and as the family gathers around her and the vet puts her to sleep, are so simple and sad that I imagine Lamott must have experienced this event too.

The other element that makes the book feel intimate is Lamott’s unique choices of imagery.  Her descriptions are just not quite like any others .  She can make normal things seem totally horrible or totally glorious in just a sentence or two.  See for yourself:

Totally Horrible: (Describing the scene at a nursing home):  “So Mattie and the children wandered the halls and worriedly watched the old people do things nice old people were not supposed to do–play with food, moan, gape at things that weren’t there.  Grandparents were supposed to have looks of tender appreciation on their faces when they saw children; these people wore rubber Halloween masks of insanity and vacancy, their eyes rolling and weepy, their tongues thrusting, their fingers of bone.”

Totally Glorious: (Describing an old woman): “She looked like an ancient Russian nun, all wrinkles and creases, spokes emanating from around her mouth like sun rays, deep dark eyes hidden by folds of skin.  Half of her face was in light, the other mostly in shadow, which created a sense of rest: without the shadow you wouldn’t have seen the shape, the landscape of her face.”

Also, Anne Lamott has this thing for ”smell” imagery.  I remember this was the case in Rosie too.   She just mentions the smell of things in her descriptions a lot–Mattie’s children’s heads, an old woman’s apartment, an empty room– and it sticks out to me.  Not a bad or good thing, just unique.

In comparison to her non-fiction, Lamott’s novels suffer from a lack of humor.  The witty, self-depreceting humor in her non-fiction is absolutely crucial.  I miss it here.  The book is very rarely funny or even light-hearted.  Sure, Mattie is dealing with all those aforementioned problems, but so is Lamott in her non-fiction, and she still uses humor all the time.  I would really like to see what Lamott could do if she made a great departure from the fiction she’s written so far, and wrote a novel in the humorous vein of her non-fiction.

Until she does that or publishes a new book of non-fiction, or until I have a kid and it is time to read Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, I might be taking a break from Anne Lamott.  But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you haven’t read Travelling Mercies, take a break from whatever you are doing and read it right now.  (Especially if you are Jack and you have my copy.  No, I don’t want it back.  I want you to read it.)