Hard Laughter
by Anne Lamott
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Description
Jennifer is twenty three when her beloved father, Wallace, is diagnosed with a brain tumor. This catastrophic discovery sets off Anne Lamott's unexpectedly sweet and funny first novel, which is made dramatic not so much by the course of Wallace's illness as by the emotional wake it sweeps under Jen and her brothers, self contained Ben and Feckless, lovable Randy. With characteristic affection and dead on accuracy, Lamott sketches this offbeat family and their nearest and dearest as they draw show more ever closer in the intimacy Jen prizes among the other estimable things: good music, good hard laughter, good sex, good industry, and good books." show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Perhaps I was more of an impressionable young woman when I first read and loved this book. Somehow this story helped me dealing with some of this sort of stuff, somehow I enjoy it a little more than I do all the religion stuff she acquired a little later. This was a wonderful introduction for the later books, which I am still glad I read although I've sort of missed it all since "Blue Shoe." I'm sorry. It's just that there's so many other books and I don't really want to read about soberness and religion, I want to read about sex and drugs and rock and roll.
This one took me a really long time to read. It was raw and dark and not the best choice for the beginning of summer fun! I appreciate the picture the author was trying to paint, but it almost became a dnf for me and that never happens!
This is where Anne Lamott started. I have her first edition, even with an erratum slip wedged in it. It was purchased at Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, California.
You know Anne Lamott's work today? This is everything she was before she got clean and sober and found Jesus. Still Anne, just drunk and high. Her voice was as clear then as it is today.
You know Anne Lamott's work today? This is everything she was before she got clean and sober and found Jesus. Still Anne, just drunk and high. Her voice was as clear then as it is today.
The style of this book just put me off from the very first word to the point where I couldn't finish even 30 pages of it.
The style of this book just put me off from the very first word to the point where I couldn't finish even 30 pages of it.
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Author Information
39+ Works 32,493 Members
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 show more 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) show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Hard Laughter
- Original publication date
- 1980
- Epigraph
- i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive agai... (show all)n today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of the life and of love and wings:and the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
--e. e. cummings
Problem stated at its most succinct - is life too short to
be taking shit or is life too short to mind it?
--Violet Weingarten
Intimations of Mortality - Dedication
- This book is dedicated to my father, Ken
and to Steve, John, and Nikki Lamott;
to the family and to the cronies. - First words
- My family lived for fifteen years in a castle built more than a century ago by an eccentric man who wanted his Rhine-born wife to feel at home when he brought her to live in California.
- Blurbers
- Tyler, Anne
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 530
- Popularity
- 56,076
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.47)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 6
