There's a lot to enjoy here: characters, setting, timeframe. It seems mostly personal though it's fiction. As with Blue Shoe, I felt the writer fictionalized her own story 'to protect the innocent', so to speak, and to allow herself to add chunks of others' stories or histories as she wished. It has the feel of someone writing in a mode to heal, reveal, and bring forth cathartically the past. ( )

With me at least, Anne Lamott is sort of a victim of her own success: I'm always much happier with her memoirs than I am with the semi-autobiographical fiction that covers much of the same territory. ( )

With me at least, Anne Lamott is sort of a victim of her own success: I'm always much happier with her memoirs than I am with the semi-autobiographical fiction that covers much of the same territory. ( )

With me at least, Anne Lamott is sort of a victim of her own success: I'm always much happier with her memoirs than I am with the semi-autobiographical fiction that covers much of the same territory. ( )

This is vintage Anne Lamott -- and I'm a big fan of Anne Lamott. The territory and characters will be familiar to her fans -- coming of age in California at a time and place when children are sophisticated and adults are childish; where even the pets are flawed (the old dog is gassy and the young ones are neurotic); where development is taking over the history and charmof the area; where family members are full of quirks, addictions, angst of so many kinds -- and yet manage to show love and grace. Anne Lamott seems to be speaking about various characters in her own life, her father, for instance, and her own son Sam becomes the brother in the novel, and the mother seems to be an amalgam of herself and her mother, her best friends appear, and Nanny is surely Anne. God and faith are leading characters, as well as Nanny/Anne's unlikely hair. ( )