From Barnes & Noble

In 2001, Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies established its author as a popular, idiosyncratic commentator on matters of faith. In this collection of essays, Lamott writes about scary times in a post-9/11 world, where terrorism, environmental disaster, and personal tragedy seem close at hand. Plan B offers hope in the midst of despair, mixing Lamott's crazy wisdom ("I think we are diamond hearts, wrapped in meatballs") with starkly honest insights about aging, Alzheimer's, and death.

From the Publisher

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.

The New York Times - Lauren F. Winner

If one needs a corrective to the notion that all American Christians are happy with George W. Bush, one need look no farther than Anne Lamott's Plan B. A sequel of sorts to Traveling Mercies, her previous collection of assorted, quirky subtitular thoughts on faith, Plan B presents Lamott at middle age, totally despondent about the Iraq war, the administration and the future of the world. She decides not to kill herself -- overeating would be her preferred method -- only because she wants to stay alive to protest the war and the White House.

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. Author tour. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Novelist Lamott's latest is an easy read, crackling with puns, funny anecdotes, and memorable sayings coined by her minister, family, and friends. As in Traveling Mercies, this book's predecessor, the chapters comprise biographical sketches and reflections on the author's Christian faith. The sketches follow no chronological or thematic order, giving the book a slightly disjointed quality. However, the author's insights connect them and infuse them with meaning. Lamott is also more politically outspoken here than she has been previously. While she repeatedly criticizes the current Bush administration and their hawkish agenda, these commentaries do not dead-end there; instead, they swerve back to the positive ways in which she can influence the world, the political leaders, and her own community. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Maria Kochis, California State Univ. Lib., Sacramento Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Funny, acerbic reflections on faith and family during George W. Bush's first administration. Readers have long awaited Lamott's second book on spirituality (after Traveling Mercies, 1999), and it won't disappoint-or not too much. As before, Lamott charts her life as a deeply religious Christian and committed leftist, though she's no stereotypically pious Presbyterian. For example, she has dreadlocks and an out-of-wedlock son, her beloved Sam. She wears a red bracelet that was blessed by the Dalai Lama, and she hates Republicans, most especially George W. Bush. In the essays here, many from Salon, Lamott portrays herself as a mother heroically trying to figure out how to parent a smart-and occasionally smart-alecky-teenager. She also describes her attempts to love her aging, sagging body. And she takes readers inside her wonderfully warm church, still under the leadership of the awesome Veronica. Throughout, we read about her struggle to forgive her dead mother, and, because Lamott's trademark humor and irreverence mark practically every page, readers will howl with laughter at Lamott's inability to do anything with Mom's ashes other than leave them in her closet. But there's also the real work Lamott is doing here, the hard, slow work of forgiveness, and things can get teary. Still, the book doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. One example will suffice: Somehow Sam, whom readers first met in utero in Operating Instructions (1993), then as an enchanting grammar-schooler in Traveling, doesn't make quite as charming a character this time around. Lamott's approach to parenting an adolescent is not without wisdom, but reading about the Lamotts' battles over homework is neitherentertaining nor illuminating. Traveling Mercies set a very high standard, and to say that Plan B almost gets there is still to say that it's a wonderful read Lamott's legions of fans will no doubt lap up. Agent: Sarah Chalfant/The Wylie Agency

Product Details

• Table of Contents
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Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Plan B

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Chapter One

Everyone I know has been devastated by Bush's presidency and, in particular, our country's heroic military activities overseas. I can usually manage a crabby hope that there is meaning in mess and pain, that more will be revealed, and that truth and beauty will somehow win out in the end. But I'd been struggling as my birthday approached. So much had been stolen from us by Bush, from the very beginning of his reign, and especially since he went to war in Iraq. I wake up some mornings pinned to the bed by centrifugal sadness and frustration. A friend called to wish me Happy Birthday, and I remembered something she'd said many years ago, while reading a Vanity Fair article about Hitler's affair with his niece. "I have had it with Hitler," Peggy said vehemently, throwing the magazine to the floor. And I'd had it with Bush.

Hadn't the men in the White House ever heard of the word karma? They lied their way into taking our country to war, crossing another country's borders with ferocious military might, trying to impose our form of government on a sovereign nation, without any international agreement or legal justification, and set about killing the desperately poor on behalf of the obscenely, rich. Then we're instructed, like naughty teenagers, to refrain from saying that it was an immoral war that set a disastrous precedent-because to do so is to offer aid and comfort to the enemy.

While I was thinking about all this, my Jesuit friend Father Tom called. He is one of my closest friends, a few years older than I, a scruffy aging Birkenstock type, like me, who gives lectures and leads retreats on spirituality. Usually he calls to report on the latest rumors of my mental deterioration, drunkenness, or promiscuity, how sick it makes everyone to know that I am showing all my lady parts to the neighbors. But this time he called to wish me Happy Birthday.

"How are we going to get through this craziness?" I asked. There was silence for a moment.

"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said.

Father Tom loves the desert. A number of my friends do. They love the skies that pull you into infinity, like the ocean. They love the silence, and how, if you listen long enough, the pulse of the desert begins to sound like the noise your finger makes when you run it around the rim of a crystal glass. They love the scary beauty-snakes, lizards, scorpions, the kestrels and hawks. They love the mosaics of water-washed pebbles on the desert floor, small rocks that cast huge shadows, a shoot of vegetation here, a wildflower there.

I like the desert for short periods of time, from inside a car, with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. I prefer beach resorts with room service. But liberals have been in the desert for several years now, and I'm worn out. Some days I hardly know what to pray for. Peace? Well, whatever.

So the morning of my birthday, because I couldn't pray, I did what Matisse once said to do: "I don't know if I believe in God or not.... But the essential thing is to put oneself in a frame of mind which is close to that of prayer." I closed my eyes, and got quiet. I tried to look like Mother Mary, with dreadlocks and a bad back.

But within seconds, I was frantic to turn on the TV. I was in withdrawal-I needed more scolding from Donald Rumsfeld, and more malignant celebration of what everyone agreed, in April 2003, was a great victory for George W. Bush. So we couldn't find those stupid weapons of mass destruction-pick, pick, pick. I didn't turn on the TV. I kept my eyes closed, and breathed. I started to feel crazy, and knew that all I needed was five minutes of CNN. I listened to the birds sing outside, and it was like Chinese water torture, which I am sure we don't say anymore. Then I remembered the weekend when 11 million people in the world marched for peace, how joyful it was to be part of the stirrings of a great movement. My pastor, Veronica, says that peace is joy at rest, and joy is peace on its feet, and I felt both that weekend.

I lay on the floor with my eyes closed for so long that my dog, Lily, came over and worriedly licked me back to life. That cheered me up. "What did you get me for my birthday?" I asked. She started to chew on my head. That helped. Maybe the old left is dead, but after we've rested awhile we can prepare for something new. I don't know who on the left can lead us away from the craziness and barbarity: I'm very confused now. But I know that in the desert, you stay out of the blistering sun. You go out during the early morning, and in the cool of the evening. You seek oasis, shade, safety, refreshment. There's every hue of green, and of gold. But I'm only pretending to think it's beautiful; I find it terribly scary. I walk on eggshells, and hold my breath.

I called Tom back.

He listened quietly. I asked him for some good news.

He thought. "Well," he said finally, "My cactuses are blooming. Last week they were ugly and reptilian, and now they are bursting with red and pink blossoms. They don't bloom every year, so you have to love them while they're here."

"I hate cactuses," I said. "I want to know what to do. Where we even start."

"We start by being kind to ourselves. We breathe, we eat. We remember that God is present wherever people stiffer. God's here with us when we're miserable, and God is there in Iraq. The suffering of innocent people draws God close to them. Kids hit by U.S. bombs are not abandoned by God."

"Well, it sure looks like they were," I said. "It sure looks that way to their parents."

"It also looked like Christ had been abandoned on the cross. It looked like a win for the Romans."

"How do we help? How do we not lose our minds?"

"You take care of the suffering."

"I can't get to Iraq."

"There are folks who are miserable here."

After we got off the phone, I ate a few birthday chocolates. Then I asked God to help me be helpful. It was the first time that day that I felt my prayers were sent, and then received-like e-mail. I tried to cooperate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV. I asked God to help me again. The problem with God-or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God-is that fie or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this-that life and change take time. Chou En-lai, when asked, "What do you think of the French Revolution?" paused for a minute-smoking incessantly-then replied, "Too soon to tell." I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type. It took decades for Bush to destroy, the Iraqi army in three weeks.

But I prayed: Help me. And then I drove to the market in silence, to buy my birthday dinner.

I flirted with everyone in the store, especially the old people, and I lightened up. When the checker finished ringing up my items, she looked at my receipt and cried, "Hey! You've won a ham."

I felt blindsided by the news. I had asked for help, not a ham. This was very disturbing. What on earth was I going to do with ten pounds of salty pink eraser? I rarely eat it. It makes you bloat.

"Wow," I said. The checker was so excited about giving it to me that I pretended I was, too.

How great!

A bagger was dispatched to the back of the store to fetch my ham. I stood waiting anxiously. I wanted to go home, so I could start caring for suffering people, or turn on CNN. I almost suggested that the checker award the ham to the next family who paid with food stamps. But for some reason, I waited. If God was giving me a ham, I'd be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

I waited ten minutes for what I began to think of as "that fucking ham." Finally the bag boy handed me a parcel the size of a cat. I put it with feigned cheer into my grocery cart, and walked to the car, trying to figure out who might need it. I thought about chucking the parcel out the window near a field. I was so distracted that I crashed my cart smack into a slow-moving car in the parking lot.

I started to apologize, when I noticed that the car was a rusty wreck, and that an old friend was at the wheel. We got sober together a long time ago, and each of us had a son at the same time. She has dark black skin and processed hair the color of cooled tar.

She opened her window. "Hey," I said. "How are you-it's my birthday!"

"Happy Birthday," she said, and started crying. She looked drained and pinched, and after a moment, she pointed to her gas gauge. "I don't have money for gas, or food. I've never asked for help from a friend since I got sober, but I'm asking you to help me."

"I've got money," I said.

"No, no, I just need gas," she said. "I've never asked someone for a handout."

"It's not a handout," I told her. "It's my birthday present." I thrust a bunch of money into her hand, everything I had. Then I reached into my shopping cart and held out the ham to her like a clown offering flowers. "Hey!" I said. "Do you and your kids like ham?"

"We love it," she said. "We love it for every meal."

She put it in the seat beside her, firmly, lovingly, as if she were about to strap it in. And she cried some more.

Later, thinking about her, I remembered the seasonal showers in the desert, how potholes in the rocks fill up with rain. When you look later, there are already flogs in the water, and brine shrimp reproducing, like commas doing the macarena; and it seems, but only seems, that you went from parched to overflow in the blink of an eye.

(Continues...)

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