Blue Shoe [Paperback]

TheNew York TimesBestseller from the beloved author ofBird by Bird,Hallelujah Anyway,andAlmost Everything

Mattie Ryder is marvelously neurotic, well-intentioned, funny, religious, sarcastic, tender, angry, and broke. Her life at the moment is a wreck: her marriage has failed, her mother is failing, her house is rotting, her waist is expanding, her children are misbehaving, and she has a crush on a married man. Then she finds a small rubber blue shoe—nothing more than a gumball trinket—left behind by her father. For Mattie, it becomes a talisman—a chance to recognize the past for what it was, to see the future as she always hoped it could be, and to finally understand her family, herself, and the ever-unfolding mystery of her sweet, sad, and sometimes surprising life.

Moving and funny, fetchingly irreverent and soulful,Blue Shoeis an absolute joy. —Chicago Sun-Times

”Everybody loves Anne Lamott...[she] writes with an emotional shorthand that’s instantly decipherable and funny to anyone who’s had children—or parents.”—The Christian Science Monitor

Irresistible...Lamott has created a work full of shaggy, truthful charm. —San Francisco Chronicle

”Glorious...After readingBlue Shoe, you feel as if you had sat on the kitchen floor and talked with the author late into the night about your mothers, your bodies, your lovers, and God. And that, in a nutshell, is the minor miracle of Lamott’s writing.”—The Atlanta Journal Constitution

”Philosophical, honest, and poignant, Lamott writes about real life and how it goes on, through good and through bad.”—Boston Herald

”The novel’s effect on the reader is profoundly springlike: It is tló(