Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Summary and Reviews of Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

Traveling Mercies

Some Thoughts on Faith

by Anne Lamott
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • First Published:
  • Feb 1, 1999, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2000, 255 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

A chronicle of faith and spirituality that is at once tough, personal, affectionate, wise and very funny.

From the bestselling author of Operating Instructions and Bird by Bird comes a chronicle of faith and spirituality that is at once tough, personal, affectionate, wise and very funny.

With an exuberant mix of passion, insight, and humor, Anne Lamott takes us on a journey through her often troubled past to illuminate her devout but quirky walk of faith. In a narrative spiced with stories and scripture, with diatribes, laughter, and tears, Lamott tells how, against all odds, she came to believe in God and then, even more miraculously, in herself. She shows us the myriad ways in which this sustains and guides her, shining the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life and exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.

Whether writing about her family or her dreadlocks, sick children or old friends, the most religious women of her church of the men she's dated, Lamott reveals the hard-won wisdom gathered along her path to connectedness and liberation.

My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. Each prepared me for the next leaf on which I would land, and in this way I moved across the swamp of doubt and fear. When I look back at some of these early resting places--the boisterous home of the Catholics, the soft armchair of the Christian Science mom, adoption by ardent Jews--I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today.

That One Ridiculous Palm

The railroad yard below our house was ringed in green, in grass and weeds and blackberry bushes and shoulder-high anise plants that smelled and tasted of licorice; this wreath of green, like a cell membrane, contained the tracks and the trains and the roundhouse, where engines were repaired. The buildings rose up ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your reading of Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. We hope that they will suggest a variety of ways to talk about this delightful and moving story of one woman's journey in faith.

When Anne Lamott was twenty-five, her father died after a long struggle with brain cancer. Over the next few years she herself began to suffer from an overwhelming sense of desperation and fear, which she tried to suppress with alcohol and pills. Although she was managing to write and publish successful novels at the time, it was clear that her life was spinning out of control. In Traveling Mercies, a memoir that sparkles with wry wit and compassion, she now writes...
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

The New Yorker
Anne Lamott is a cause for celebration. [Her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones. . . perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous.

Los Angeles Times Book Review
Smart, funny, comforting. . . Lamott has a conversational style that perfectly conveys her friendly, self-deprecating humor.

Newsweek
Lamott writes about subjects that begin with capital letters (Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus). But armed with self-effacing humor and ruthless honesty--call it a lower-case approach to life's Big Questions--she converts potential op-ed boilerplate into enlightenment.

People
Eloquent, detailed, emotionally honest. . . Lamott deserves praise for telling it like it is.

Seattle Times
[She is] sidesplittingly funny, patiently wise, and alternately cranky and kind.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Traveling Mercies, try these:

  • Heart in the Right Place jacket

    Heart in the Right Place

    by Carolyn Jourdan

    Published 2008

    About this book

    Heart in the Right Place, an alternately laugh-out-loud-funny and cry-your-eyes-out-serious memoir about the down-sizing of Carolyn Jourdan's life from white marble columns, gilded domes, and Neiman Marcus to naugahyde, peeling linoleum, and Wal-mart.

  • Eat, Pray, Love jacket

    Eat, Pray, Love

    by Elizabeth Gilbert

    Published 2007

    About this book

    More by this author

    A celebrated writer's irresistible, candid, and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.

Read-Alikes are one of the many benefits of membership. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Anne Lamott
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Our Evenings
    Our Evenings
    by Alan Hollinghurst
    Alan Hollinghurst's novel Our Evenings is the fictional autobiography of Dave Win, a British ...
  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..