From Booklist
In her latest whirling, fuming, blunt, wise, and funny book of homilies, following the best-selling Help, Thanks, Wow (2012), Lamott combines exasperation and sorrow over perpetual and universal suffering with a stubborn belief in the possibility of meaning, solace, and mending. She asks how we can even begin to seek coherence when children are massacred in their schools and polar bears are “floating out to sea on scraps of ice.” All we can do is what needs to be done. We clean up oil spills, rebuild after catastrophes, care for the sick, serve food, and wash floors. Lamott connects the epic to the ordinary and observes, “We live stitch by stitch, when we’re lucky.” As she tells charmingly self-mocking yet laser-sharp stories from her patchwork life of spiritual inquiry—one about a blouse she inherited from a friend who died too young, another about a creatively repaired curtain—sewing and darning become metaphors for accepting life’s cycles of joy and loss, and for taking care of each other and the world. Lamott’s larky yet shrewd needle-and-thread spirituality is realistic and renewing. --Donna Seaman
Review
Praise for Stitches
“Lamott’s pithiest, most insightful book yet, Stitches offers plenty of her characteristic witty wisdom…this slim, readable volume [is] a lens on life, widening and narrowing, encouraging each reader to reflect on what it is, after all, that really matters.”
—People
“Laced with stories, full of faith…a hopeful [book].”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The wickedly witty and very funny Lamott…makes you laugh at the same time she makes you think. This collection of moments, memories and spiritual insights is one of her best.”
—Denver Post
“Like a warming, hearty sip of soup after a day out in the cold or a candid letter from a friend.”
—New York Daily News
“[Stitches] brings the beloved author's trademark compassion, wisdom and tart wit to the question of how to deal with suffering and loss, both public and personal.”
—Tampa Bay Times
“Whirling, fuming, blunt, wise, and funny…Lamott’s larky yet shrewd needle-and-thread spirituality is realistic and renewing.”
—Booklist
“Vintage Lamott: funny, brilliantly self-deprecating, and insightful.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Anne’s thoughts on human loss and brokenness are served with slices of quirky humor, wisdom and spiritual insight that pulls readers in and won’t let them go.”
—Examiner.com
Praise for Help, Thanks, Wow
“Charmingly irreverent.”
—More magazine
“Filled with Lamott’s unique brand of humor, wisdom, and profound spiritual insight . . . She has a gift for putting into words what it means to accept and ultimately embrace the beauty, mystery, and pain that is life.”
—San Antonio Express-News
“Prayer is a topic that can quickly turn treacly, but the reader needn’t fear that in Lamott’s irreverent hands.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Practical and poetic advice on prayer.”
—The Oregonian
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