Product Description

The NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER from the beloved author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies.

A funny, warm, and wise novel about family and forgiveness from an author acclaimed as "nothing short of miraculous" (The New Yorker).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77380 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-02
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
One of the few progressive Christian writers with a national voice, Anne Lamott's work (Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions) ranges from the meditative to the hilarious. Blue Shoe falls somewhere in the middle of that range. A slow, thoughtful novel, rooted in the domestic routines of child-raising, Blue Shoe follows the newly separated Mattie Ryder as she moves back into her childhood home, recently vacated by her elderly mother, and undertakes the renovation of her entire life. Her best friend Angela has left the San Francisco Bay area to move in with her new lover, Julie. Mattie's ex-husband, Nicky, has settled so quickly into a steady relationship with a young woman named Lee that it is clear they were involved during his marriage to Mattie. Nicky and Mattie's two children are displaying signs of emotional disturbance (Lamott is at her best in describing the quietly weird behavior of young children). And to add to the mix, Mattie's mother is falling into a senile dementia characterized by pleading phone calls and wacky assertions of independence. All Mattie wants is a little more money, a decent boyfriend, and for her philandering father to rise from his grave and solve all her problems. Is that so much to ask? Some of the action in this novel could have been compressed, and the major subplot involving Mattie's father fails to excite, but the strengths of Blue Shoe--humor, unflinching characterization, and keen observation--more than compensate for its weaknesses. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Memoirist and novelist Lamott (Operating Instructions; Crooked Little Heart, etc.) brilliantly captures the dilemma of a divorced woman from the so-called "sandwich generation" in her latest, a funny, poignant and occasionally gut-wrenching novel that tracks the efforts of Mattie Ryder to cope with her divorce, find a new man, deal with her mother's aging and restore the emotional equilibrium of her two young children. The divorce dominates in the early going as Mattie continues to sleep with her sexy but egotistical ex-husband, Nick, even though his new romance with a younger woman is clipping along at a sprightly pace. Meanwhile, Mattie grows close to a married friend named Daniel, who also feels a romantic pull although he's happily married. Mattie's feisty mother, Isa, ages precipitously and becomes increasingly disoriented, leading to a series of calamities. Mattie's touching relationships with her kids, two-year-old Ella and difficult but sensitive six-year-old Harry, become the emotional anchor for the novel, and narrative momentum is provided by the gradual unfolding of a family secret, which reveals the infidelities of Mattie's late father. Most of the comedy is of the domestic variety, and Lamott continually displays her gift for finding the right combination of humor and small but significant revelations in ordinary moments. The ensemble cast is another major strength of the book, providing a backdrop against which Mattie, Daniel, Isa and the children emerge as powerful and memorable individuals. Lamott has explored similar terrain in her earlier works, but the scope and freshness of this novel could make it a breakout work for her.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lamott's use of language allows us to see the smallest details from a fresh perspective, and her stories of motherhood and faith never fail to entertain and move us, all within the tightly wound ball of a good literary yarn. Her seventh novel (after Crooked Little Heart) stars Mattie Ryder, the mother of two, who's left her wandering husband and moved into the ramshackle house of her difficult mother. Mattie has a lot of things to figure out. After serendipitously coming across some old trinkets that belonged to her dead father (including a little blue rubber shoe from a gumball machine), Mattie is drawn into the past to discover the truth about her dad. At the same time, her demanding mother is failing and probably needs to go into a nursing home. And when the house is overrun by rats, the pest-control people send Daniel, who has a ponytail and "closely set brown eyes that made him look like an incompetent bird of prey." What turns into friendship could, for Mattie, be love. Lamott uses offbeat, descriptive language (e.g., vibrational and snorfled), and her story is as good as her funky turn of a phrase. For most popular fiction collections.
Beth Gibbs, Davidson, NC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Lamott Enchants Again
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.

blue, who?
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.

Who cares?
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.