Product Description

With Anne Lamott's trademark wisdom, humor and honesty, Plan B is a spiritual antidote to anxiety and despair in our increasingly fraught times. This New York Times bestseller picks up where Traveling Mercies left off.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254013 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com
Few people can write about faith, parenting, and relationships as can the talented, irreverent Anne Lamott. With characteristic black humor, ("Everyone has been having a hard time with life this year; not with all of it, just the waking hours") she updates us on the ongoing mayhem of her life since Traveling Mercies, and continues to unfold her spiritual journey.

Plan B finds Lamott wrestling with mid-life hormones and weight gain while parenting Sam, now a teenager with his own set of raging hormones. Her observations cover everything from starting a Sunday school to grief over the death of her beloved dog, Sadie; lamenting the war to bitterness over her relationship with her now-departed mother.

As she tugs and pokes out the knots in a slender gold chain necklace, it becomes a metaphor for letting go and learning to forgive. "…any willingness to let go inevitably comes from pain; and the desire to change changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to the deepest, hardest, most ruined parts." It’s her willingness to show us the knotted-up, "ruined parts" of her life that make this collection of sometimes uneven essays so compelling.

"Everything feels crazy," writes Lamott, adding, "But on small patches of earth all over, I can see just as much messy mercy and grace as ever…." Lamott’s essays will serve as reminders to readers of the patches of messy mercy and grace in a chaotic world.--Cindy Crosby

From Publishers Weekly
Five years after her bestselling Traveling Mercies, Lamott sends us 24 fresh dispatches from the frontier of her life and her Christian faith. To hear her tell it, neither the state of the country nor the state of her nerves has improved, to say the least. "On my forty-ninth birthday, I decided that all of life is hopeless, and I would eat myself to death. These are dessert days." Thankfully, her gift for conveying the workings of grace to left-wing, high-strung, beleaguered people like herself is still intact, as is her ability to convey the essence of Christian faith, which she finds not in dogma but in our ability to open our hearts in the midst of our confusion and hopelessness. Most of these pieces were published in other versions on Salon.com, and they cover subjects as disparate as the Bush administration; the death of Lamott's dog, her mother and a friend; life with a teenager and with her 50-year-old thighs--yet each shows how our hearts and lives can go "from parched to overflow in the blink of an eye." What is the secret? Lamott makes us laugh at the impossibility of it all; then she assures us that the most profound act we can accomplish on Earth is coming out of the isolation of our minds and giving to one another. Faith is not about how we feel, she shows; it is about how we live. "Don't worry! Don't be so anxious. In dark times, give off light. Care for the least of God's people!" Naturally, some pieces are stronger than others--her wonderful style can come across as a bit mannered, the wrapup a bit forced. But this is quibbling about a book that is better than brilliant. This is that rare kind of book that is like a having a smart, dear, crazy (in the best sense) friend walk next to us in sunlight and in the dark night of the soul.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Traveling Mercies chronicled Lamott’s slow journey toward faith. Now in her 50s, Lamott still insists upon sugarcoating nothing in this enlightening update. She combines brilliant sparks of wit, self-deprecating humor, wisdom, and appreciation in these 24 essays, previously published in Salon (see http://dir.salon.com/topics/anne_lamott/ for an excerpt from Plan B). If some have a moralistic bent, they rarely proselytize; instead, they inquire into Lamott’s own, and sometimes naughty, truths. The best essays discuss Lamott’s son’s relationship with his father; conversely, Entertainment Weekly cited the piece about loving George W. Bush as Jesus as "an easy comic stunt." But the lesson is the same: "Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity." Although Lamott has had her share of life struggles, she sure makes it look easy. Buck up, kid: As Lamott says, "God has extremely low standards."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Lose the politics already!
I like Anne Lamott's writings but she continuously bashes the President in this book. I think this is uncalled for. Seriously. She hates the President instead of praying for him (and as another reviewer noted she should "love thy neighbor") it totally turned me off in this book. Thank goodness I got this one at the library and did not waste my money on this book. Very disappointing.

Anne Lamott Strikes Again
I love Anne Lamott and this book is no exception. As always, she writes with honesty and humor about her everyday experiences. She helps me see the lighter and darker side of Christianity and life in general. I can relate to her foibles and rejoice with her in her human triumphs. I'm glad for Christian writers who I can relate to-not holier than thou, never make a mistake writers. I won't mention names. This book was a blessing.

I love (LOVE) Annie but...
I adore this woman for her faith, her wit and her unbelievable ability to keep on "keepin on" but the politics in this book just about drove me over the edge. I know, I know... to love Annie is to expect her political rantings. I kept reading and I did gleam little nuggets here or there of the Annie I know & love. It was worth the read, if only I could fast forward some of the politic heavy chapters.