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Summary
Author Notes
Anne Lamott was born on April 10, 1954 in San Francisco, California. She began writing when she returned to California after spending two years at Goucher College, but her early efforts, mostly short stories, met with little success. The turning point in her writing came with a family crisis, when her father was diagnosed with brain cancer. She wrote a series of short pieces about the traumatic effect that serious illness has on a family. These pieces were published, and they eventually became the basis of her first novel, Hard Laughter, published in 1980.
During the 1980s, she wrote three additional novels, Rosie, Joe Jones and All New People. In 1989, her life took another turn when her son was born. Her next book, published in 1993, was a non-fiction effort called Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year. She wrote ironically, but candidly, about her struggles to adjust to her new role as a mother and a single parent, and her experiences with everything from sleep deprivation to financial and emotional uncertainty to concerns about what she would tell her son when he was old enough to ask about his absent father.
Operating Instructions proved to be even more successful than her novels, and led to interviews on network news programs and a regular spot on National Public Radio. Her other works include Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life; Crooked Little Heart; Blue Shoe, Imperfect Birds, and Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son. Her title Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. Her title Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair and Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace also made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
A trendy-talking how-to-cope novel with lots of elevated pop-philosophical overtones from the author of Hard Laughter (1980) and Rosie (1983). Serious in its aims, sometimes funny, mainly just plain ludicrous. At Jessie's Cafe in California (""the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan"") are gathered a family-like group of people, all with problems. There is Jessie (her problem is that she's 79), the lovable and eccentric owner who sits each day at a window table with her dotty and senile friend Georgia. There is Willie, Jessie's 20-year-old orphaned grandson, whose problem is that he's been dumped by a lover ("" 'It's like we're out there on the porch, and he's being really adorable, and flirty,' he's choking on the words, stammering through tears. . .""). There's worldly-but-tender 43-year-old Louise, whose problem (among numerous others--including a wish to believe in God) is that she's been two-timed by Joe Jones; and there's Joe Jones himself, whose problem is a comically neurotic hypochondria and doom-anxiety caused by a dead father, cold mother, and miserably oversensitive childhood. But such problems are as nothing to that of Eva, the bird-thin, flutteringly helpless, exquisitely neurasthenic science teacher who, yes, is dying of a nameless, fatal disease. In the midst of all the sense of doom (often risibly inflated: ""The big eraser in the sky is going to come down and rub out Jessie. [Louise's] mind spins with sorrow for Willie. He is so young to have had so many amputations""), Jessie up and dies of heart failure (and Willie, before putting his fist through a window, says: ""I have taken--too many blows""). As for the rest, Eva goes off to Alaska, sending back postcards en route, we suppose, to a wispy, ennobled death; the unemployable Joe Jones gets a job tending bar (everyone cheers when they hear the news); and Willie and Louise plan a nice, stable, ""brother-and-sister"" marriage (""Willie? I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else in my life""), thus cauterizing life with a gesture of childish, orphans-in-the-storm perversity of the sort that, under it all, pervades the novel. A soap opera with literary pretensions, often brisk and cocky on the surface, sophomoric just about everywhere else. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Jessie's Caf?, a tired waterfront restaurant, provides the focus of this latest Lamott novel. Jessie inherited the caf? years ago and at 79 visits daily, chattering away to her mute friend Georgia. Life is hard for the frequenters of Jessie's, and their attempts to cope form the story line. Louise, the cook and mother figure, misses Joe, her faithless former lover whom she threw out, and he still pines for her. Willie, Jessie's gay grandson, tries to stay away from drugs after his lover takes a job in a distant city. Then Louise meets Eve and invites her to the caf?. Alone and suffering from a terminal illness, maybe AIDS, Eve joins the "Caf? family," bringing a quiet dignity as she copes with her failing health. Lamott's characteristic humor shines through the pain. Although this book lacks the more defined plot of Lamott's earlier works (Blue Shoe and Rosie), listeners will enjoy the warmth, love, and compassion these imperfect people display. Barbara Rosenblatt, one of the most accomplished audiobook narrators around, reads with clarity, making each character distinctive. Recommended for large public libraries.ANancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Joe Jones is Anne Lamott's raucous novel of the lives gathered around Jessie's Cafe, "a restaurant from another era, the sort of broken-down waterfront dive one might expect to find in Steinbeck or Saroyan." Jessie, "thin, stooped and gorgeous at seventy-nine," inherited the cafe years before and it has become home to a remarkable family of characters: Louise, the cook and vortex, "sexy and sweet, somewhere on the cusp between curvaceous and fat"; Joe, devoted and unfaithful; Willie, Jessie's gay grandson; Georgia, an empress dowager who never speaks; and a dozen others all living together in the sweet everyday. Excerpted from Joe Jones by Anne Lamott All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
