Truth And Beauty Ann Patchett Summary

Ann Patchett’s memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship exposes the true life of Lucy Grealy, giving readers an insight into her true personality and story only a couple of years after her death. However, Suellen Grealy, Lucy’s sister, published an article “Hijacked by Grief,” in which she expresses her grief and anger toward Ann’s work so soon after her sister’s death. I agree with Suellen’s stance, because I find she is justified in her beliefs in many ways, including the short time in which this book was published, the information exposed about Lucy, and the fact that it is often read in accompaniment with Lucy’s novel, Autobiography of a Face, and can change people 's’ views on her touching story. I do, however, believe that Truth and Beauty deserved to be published eventually, just not so soon after Lucy’s death. Ann Patchett published her novel only a couple of years after Lucy’s death, her family, friends, and the world was still dealing with her loss. Suellen states in the

In her article, Suellen says “...it was somehow indecent to risk laying my family bare for the sake of Ann’s personal expression of grief.” It appears that Ann is somewhat selfish in this aspect, because she refused Suellen’s requests to find a smaller publisher or ask for no publicity. In Truth and Beauty, Ann writes about intimate conversations between her and Lucy, as can be seen in her writing: “She was completely, wretchedly miserable, but then told me after the fact it was because she had been on a huge heroin bender before she moved and decided that she would quit cold turkey when she got to Brooklyn” (page 245). If I were Lucy, I would likely imagine that because I had told her such secrets in confidence, she wouldn’t go out and share them with the world. And then, as Suellen and Ann both say in their literary works: “That was my