Customer Reviews

Blue Shoe

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

I waited with great anticipation for this new book of Lamott's and was not disappointed, finding it both enchanting and full of her particular brand of wisdom. I thought her Salon essays and "Traveling Mercies" were brilliant and found much of their material incorporated in this novel. The book is about the "mystery of family and the possibility of love" and contains Lamott's own particular brand of philosophizing. When I finished, I felt like I had been talking with a friend about all the family concerns facing women in today's world.

Lamott makes the reader see the world in a different way and feel more at peace with where we happen to be. She expands and expounds, with humor, tenderness, and love, on the smallest incidents and finds new meaning in them. She finds lessons everywhere and deals with life with bold honesty and down-to-earth spirituality. For example: "When God is going to do something wonderful, it starts with something hard, and when God is going to do something exquisite, She starts with an impossibility."

"Blue Shoe" gives us several years in 37-year-old Mattie Ryder's disorderly life, a life that is typical of those about whom Lamott writes. Once again, the setting is on the coast of Marin County, where the author herself lives. Mattie is newly divorced at the beginning, coping with all the traumas associated with still wanting her unfaithful ex-husband, moving back to her childhood home, and trying to keep body and soul together. During these years, Mattie finds new loves, deals with her mother's increasing confusion, and raises her young son and daughter with love and laughter. All the oddball characters, also typical of Lamott, somehow gracefully fit into this story and help Mattie cope, along with a strong reliance on God.

The little blue shoe is the catalyst which leads Mattie and her brother to find out more than they really want to know about their family, whose past has been glossed over by their mother. The tangled skeins of their parents marriage are slowly revealed. Mattie carries the blue shoe as a kind of good- luck charm, which gives her comfort as some difficult truths come to light.

Mattie seems to float along rather than confronting her problems head on, yet somehow, for her, this approach works and keeps her from sinking into depression as she accepts life as it is rather than fighting it. Mattie says "It was not facing what life dealt that made you crazy, but rather trying to set life straight where it was unstraightenable." This is a re-phrasing of the AA prayer with which the author is very familiar, I am sure. She has never hidden her addictions nor her continuing recovery. I think that this is a lesson that would allow many of us to be less stressed - trying to change what cannot be changed is a sure way to create stress in one's life!

Lamott's writing shines and her spiritual reflection is given full rein when she writes about Mattie's everyday worries: caring for an aging mother; attempting to get a young daughter to stop biting her nails; getting rid of the rats in the walls of her house; dealing with her son's temper.

This lovely book moves slowly through Mattie's post-divorce years and follows her gradual emotional recovery, impeded somewhat by her search for the truth about her family. During this time, many people inhabit her life, and Lamott shows us that family does not just consist of those with whom we have a blood relation, but also includes those whom we love and need on a daily basis.

I am a big fan of Anne Lamott. Her books Traveling Mercies and Bird By Bird are two of my favorites. It was out of loyalty to her that I stuck this book out even though I couldn't wait for it to be over. It's not a terrible book, it's just terribly blah. There are some shocking things that the characters do but the way it's written, it's like "yeah? So what?" Like Mattie having sex with her ex-husband when he's newly remarried and when he has a new baby. The readers could have been brought to a place of disgust or deep insight into Mattie's character through this revelation. But for me it was written so matter-of-factly it was more like, ho-hum, so what? This is the way the whole book is.

I never developed any gut understanding of Mattie's psyche. The revelations about her father could have been devastating and supposedly Mattie was devastated some of the time, but it just didn't come through. I couldn't feel what Mattie was feeling.

Seems to me, Mattie had a charmed life. Yes, her father was a [...] in a way and watching your mother deteriorate is a bummer. But she's got a house for free, she's surrounded by really good friends who stick by her, he has jobs that she likes and are apparently enough to pay the bills, she's got a good relationship with her ex and even his new wife, she's got good kids who she loves, her mother finds a devoted friend who apparently has no flaws at all, has a great relationship with her brother and sister-in-law, the man she falls in love with loves her back, etc etc. The relationships between characters seemed so perfect most of the time, even the fights were tidy. So why so much angst? What's the point of the story? Did she grow by the end of the book? Didn't seem like it to me.

I wish I could have liked this book more.

Having loved Annie Lamott's Traveling Mercies, I was thrilled to have stumbled upon Blue Shoe. However, try as I might, I couldn't force myself to finish it. I went well past my tolerance level, page 121, simply because I was sure Ms. Lamott would do something, anything, to make the plot move or at least make the characters likable. This didn't happen (Maybe it did on page 122? I couldn't wait any longer.) The only redeeming quality of the book is the exquisite descriptions throughout. My favorite was "She did not mind this weather [rainy], and certainly preferred it to the tyranny of a bright blue day, when old voices told you to get off your duff and go outside." They are beautiful and rich. However, it seemed that these descriptions were used in place of plot or character devlopment, so they eventually felt flat.

The main character, Mattie, is obviously struggling. She's a mess, in fact, sleeping with her ex-husband, even after he marries and has a child with the new wife, in addition to having the hots for a married man. I'm no prude, but there was nothing redeeming about Mattie to make me want to keep reading about this behavior, page after page, or think she might pull herself out of the pit. I finally gave up hoping that she might redeem herself. The other people around her offer little to like also: a son who is overly-emotional and bullies his sister, a daughter who bites so much at her wrist she creates and repeatedly reopens wounds, a mother who is emotionally available to everyone but Mattie and her brother,and the memory of a father who was obviously a cheater. Add to that an extended dying scene for a dog and constant problems with the house Mattie lives in...I'm getting depressed writing about it. The only fabulous character, Angela, is mentioned only a few times. She's a rich, robust character. Too bad Ms. Lamott focused on the whiny, messy ones instead.

I think I'm in love. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

Ever since discovering "Traveling Mercies," I've been an ardent Anne-Fan. That said, I admit that her fiction has often read like thinly disguised nonfiction. She recycles so many of her own experiences through her stories that it's hard not to imagine Anne as the protagonist of every novel she writes. Sure, I enjoy her honesty, but I also want to escape into something new.

"Blue Shoe" is something new. No doubt, we Anne-Fans see her shiny little face beaming/scowling/smirking/lusting through the pages of this book; however, Mattie, our recently divorced hero, is very much her own person. The story follows her attempts to reconcile life with God, her ex, her kids, her mom...oh, and the Evergreen man. Daniel doesn't want to be an Evergreen man. Mattie wants him to be her man. Daniel is married. And Mattie's still sleeping with her ex when he calls.

These elements, linked with the startling similes and heartbreaking candor of Anne's prose, add up to her best fiction yet. She deals with so many elements of betrayal and loss, love and hurt. Anne's been there, and she knows how to take us there with her. She meanders, she lets her characters stumble through life, she expects us to follow along. If you have the ability to empathize with others, it's hard not to care about someone in this story. Anyone. Choose a character. They all have their faults; they all have redeeming qualities.

I like truthfulness. I like a pimple on a beautiful face. I like to know that we are not all slaves to the picture perfect world our media tries to sell.

Thanks, Anne, for smiling and writing through the pain. I'm still in love. With this great new book, others are lining up behind me.

Revealing the American family she stands alone but among the very good company of Updike and Tyler. She conveys pain and longing, exhilaration and acceptance like no one else. It flows from the page to the brain to the heart to the funny bone. Her writing is like breathing. It's authentic with hardly a misstep. With all her neuroses, I think I love her.

I finished this painful read last evening and can only say that I have yet to read a book that is more tedious than Blue Shoe.
Several reviewers, smarter than I, quit (while they were ahead) before finishing it and, oh, how I wish that I had!

The main characters grates like chalk across the board, in their lack of substance, vacuous self-centeredness, and purposeless lives. In the lead, is Mattie. A milk toast of a woman living a gray life as a victim. Her divorce is boring, her affairs are dull, her parenting weak bordering on bad. There are no lessons learned or insights found in the draining excuse of an existence Ms. Lamott created for her. Peel me a grape...and please do yourself a favor and pass this one up.

Blue Shoe has some of the best turns of phrase and metaphors I've ever read, and I think in this respect Anne Lamott is a genius. I just didn't find the thread of plot tight enough to draw me in. Every time I put this book down I immediately forgot where I was in the plot because it just wasn't memorable to me. I also found I couldn't remember characters, and had to go back to find out who Yvonne was. I even mixed up Daniel and...I forget who! I like really slow books, and nothing much has to happen for me to stay with a book to the end, but this is the type of book that you turn in to the library because it's due, even if you haven't finished it.

I have always loved Lamott's writings, and consider Crooked Little Heart to be one of my favorite books of all time. Unfortunately Blue Shoe didn't live up to my expectations, coming from such a great writer. I alternated between feeling pity for and frustrated with Mattie, but never got around to actually liking her. Her "Christianity" was also disappointing - she went to church every Sunday and prayed, but she was almost always praying for help for herself. Except for her one instance of foot washing, I did not see any other Christian qualities in Mattie. Skip this book and return to Lamott's classics.

It wanders, it digresses, it circles around and sneaks up on you from behind. It beguiles, it teases, and it delivers. Mattie's life is a mess, her love affairs are a mess, her mother is a mess . . . and aren't we all in some kind of mess? What I especially loved about Blue Shoe is that there's a little mystery thread running through all the messiness that somehow manages to connect everything in a very tidy way that's not typical of Lamott's writing. Very clever and simple, at the same time.

Read it.

Anne Lamott is an popular writer, immensely so here in Boulder, where she drew a standing-room-only crowd on her recent visit to promote her latest novel. BLUE SHOE is an uneven novel about unpredictable relationships that will appeal to Lamott's loyal following of readers. "Life was so strange" for her quirky protagonist, Mattie Ryder, "the weather shifting so often. There were warm, bright days, and days that were dark and quiet and cool" (p. 280). Recovering from a failed marriage to a philandering husband (Nicky), Mattie finds comfort in the passing seasons of west Marin County, her troubled children (Harry and Ella), her increasingly senile Mother (Isa), her faith and church, her older brother (Alfred), her friends, and a pest control man (Daniel), who doesn't like to kill anything. But at the risk of stepping on a few toes here, Lamott's latest novel is a disappointment. In her character's 291-page search for "something to hold on to"--whether it's a little blue shoe or another man (Daniel)--Lamott never allows Mattie the potential to realize comfort and strength in herself as a woman. Fiction and nonfiction alike, I've delighted in all of Lamott's books, including BLUE SHOE. But BLUE SHOE is not Lamott at her best.

G. Merritt