Anne Lamott uses everything as a way to access the higher power in which she believes --- every bad thing that has happened to her and every bad thing that has happened to someone around her. As I write this, a close family member is about to undergo organ transplant surgery. I suppose the lessons of SMALL VICTORIES will not be lost on me tonight. Certainly I would see them clearly if I were Lamott. For her, they are a lifeline in her normal day-to-day life. None of what the rest of us see as serendipity is ever wasted on her as mere happenstance. She finds a lesson and a silver lining in everything, from dog poop in dreams to skiing accidents and a good friend's ravaging cancer.

Lamott has talked extensively about her issues with substance abuse, and her subsequent lessons about life in sobriety have filled quite a few volumes. These current selections are previously published and selected older pieces, as well as brand new ones written specifically for this book. Every story involves someone who is mortally ill, and she uses each one as a springboard for imparting what she sees as valuable advice about finding and appreciating the grace in hard times.

"Lamott’s chapters about her son and her dad are the most heart-tugging.... SMALL VICTORIES will help you find the grace in Anne Lamott’s life. But --- if you think about it really hard --- maybe, just maybe, you can find some way to use those lessons to make your life work out better, too."

Lamott’s chapters about her son and her dad are the most heart-tugging. Children and parents are relationships we can all easily understand, whereas the friendships she speaks of seem to invite familiarity but ultimately feel like you came late to the party and only got the end of the story. Lamott’s insistence on using her spiritual growth to mark the importance of her stories can be grating at times. Still, others who enjoy being told time and again that they can face their fears and sorrows with great aplomb --- even though our experiences will never be as intense as hers, and we will never be called on to exhibit the same will or strength --- will place this book by their bedside and read it often.

SMALL VICTORIES is a manual --- one writer’s manual for getting through the tougher parts of life. Whether learning to understand her father’s real-life story for the first time as an adult, taking her son on a skiing trip where she almost kills herself, or looking back at the events of her lousy marriage, Lamott unleashes the fullness of her soul upon the page. However, when she tells us about recreating the scene in which Jesus is washing the disciples’ feet on Holy Thursday by using Pepperidge Farm cookies, I started getting a little weary.

For those who share Lamott’s spiritual leanings or her insistence that she is the most deeply feeling yet flawed human being on the planet, SMALL VICTORIES is, like her other work, finely wrought and meaningful. If you have feelings about life that would not engage you necessarily in the same world as Lamott, I’m not sure this book will be as comforting to you. I don’t think that the introspectiveness she exhibits in each piece is bad; by all means, more power to her for finding a way to get through the multi-layered patchwork of crazy that is our American life. But this is more memoir and less self-help guide.

SMALL VICTORIES will help you find the grace in Anne Lamott’s life. But --- if you think about it really hard --- maybe, just maybe, you can find some way to use those lessons to make your life work out better, too.