Pair of Books Makes Good, Emotional Reading; 'Autobiography of a Face' and 'Truth & Beauty: A Friendship' Resonate with Readers

Summary

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If you'd care to have your heart first enlarged and then broken, then boy, do I have a pair of books for you. "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy and "Truth & Beauty: A Friendship" by Grealy's friend, Ann Patchett, are companion volumes that should be read in that order.

The books came to me on one of their stops in a cross-country trek among book-loving friends and relatives who are passing them along with that simple, two-word imperative that bibliophiles thrill to, "Read this." That they are hard to put down is clear from trace elements of fajitas, dog-eared pages turned back up but still creased, and a certain undulation that suggests a brief, accidental immersion in a bathtub. I like to think that the reader who dropped them had a candle burning on the sink and a glass of wine going on the side of the tub, the risk of breaking the glass or baptizing the book being worth the pleasure.

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Pair of Books Makes Good, Emotional Reading; 'Autobiography of a Face' and 'Truth & Beauty: A Friendship' Resonate with Readers

Besides, in the bathtub, nobody sees you cry, and when you read "Autobiography of a Face," you're going to. That's not because of bathos, but precisely...

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