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Overview
Mattie Ryder is marvelously neurotic, well-intentioned, funny, religious, sarcastic, tender, angry, and broke. Her life at the moment is a wreck: her marriage has failed, her mother is failing, her house is rotting, her waist is expanding, her children are misbehaving, and she has a crush on a married man. Then she finds a small rubber blue shoe—nothing more than a gumball trinket—left behind by her father. For Mattie, it becomes a talisman—a chance to recognize the past for what it was, to see the future as she always hoped it could be, and to finally understand her family, herself, and the ever-unfolding mystery of her sweet, sad, and sometimes surprising life.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781573223423 |
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Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 09/02/2003 |
Edition description: | Reissue |
Pages: | 336 |
Sales rank: | 494,519 |
Product dimensions: | 5.62(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.88(d) |
Age Range: | 18 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Hometown:
Fairfax, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
1954Place of Birth:
San Francisco, CaliforniaEducation:
Attended Goucher College in Maryland before dropping out to writeRead an Excerpt
BLUE SHOE
by Anne Lamott
At the beginning of Blue Shoe, Mattie Ryder thinks that life cannot get any more complicated. She is newly divorced and living with her two children in her childhood home, which is infested with rats and too many unanswered questions from her past. While the rat problem can be cured with an exterminator, coming to terms with her past will require Mattie to unravel her family secrets and learn some painful truths, especially about her father. The clues to his life are contained in a plastic bag that was recovered from the glove box of his old car. Inside are a paint key from a can of blue paint and a tiny blue rubber shoe. As Mattie comes to know it, the story of her father's world shocks her, but it also explains her mother's erratic behavior and distance while she was growing up. What she learns will help Mattie come to peace with her own life as she finds love with a man with whom she can have an intimate and honest relationship, and accepts the emotional baggage that she carries as a part of herself instead of a burden. Blue Shoe is an honest, irreverent and compelling story laced with self-deprecating humor, grace, and wit. As always, Anne Lamott creates characters with whom we can identify, as she explores the depths of human emotion. ABOUT ANNE LAMOTT Anne Lamott is the author of the national bestsellers Traveling Mercies, Bird by Bird, and Operating Instructions, as well as five novels, including Crooked Little Heart and Rosie. Her column in Salon magazine was voted the Best of the Web by Newsweek magazine, and she is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What People are Saying About This
"Messy, brave and weirdly lovable...a substantial literary pleasure.”New York Times Book Review
"Moving and funny, fetchingly irreverent and soulful, Blue Shoe is an absolute joy."Chicago Sun-Times
”Everybody loves Anne Lamott...[she] writes with an emotional shorthand that’s instantly decipherable and funny to anyone who’s had childrenor parents.”The Christian Science Monitor
"Irresistible...Lamott has created a work full of shaggy, truthful charm."San Francisco Chronicle
”Glorious...After reading Blue Shoe, you feel as if you had sat on the kitchen floor and talked with the author late into the night about your mothers, your bodies, your lovers, and God. And that, in a nutshell, is the minor miracle of Lamott’s writing.”The Atlanta Journal Constitution
”Philosophical, honest, and poignant, Lamott writes about real life and how it goes on, through good and through bad.”Boston Herald
”The novel’s effect on the reader is profoundly springlike: It is tonic.”Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Anyone who's ever had a heartacheor a familywill relate to Anne Lamott's poignant novels."Rosie Magazine
"Blue Shoe is a gift you will want to give yourself."St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Reading Group Guide
INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of Blue Shoe, Mattie Ryder thinks that life cannot get any more complicated. She is newly divorced and living with her two children in her childhood home, which is infested with rats and too many unanswered questions from her past. While the rat problem can be cured with an exterminator, coming to terms with her past will require Mattie to unravel her family secrets and learn some painful truths, especially about her father.
The clues to his life are contained in a plastic bag that was recovered from the glove box of his old car. Inside are a paint key from a can of blue paint and a tiny blue rubber shoe. As Mattie comes to know it, the story of her father's world shocks her, but it also explains her mother's erratic behavior and distance while she was growing up.
What she learns will help Mattie come to peace with her own life as she finds love with a man with whom she can have an intimate and honest relationship, and accepts the emotional baggage that she carries as a part of herself instead of a burden.
Blue Shoe is an honest, irreverent and compelling story laced with self-deprecating humor, grace, and wit. As always, Anne Lamott creates characters with whom we can identify, as she explores the depths of human emotion.
ABOUT ANNE LAMOTT
Anne Lamott is the author of the national bestsellers Traveling Mercies, Bird by Bird, and Operating Instructions, as well as five novels, including Crooked Little Heart and Rosie. Her column in Salonmagazine was voted the Best of the Web by Newsweek magazine, and she is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS