Small Victories

Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace

By: Anne Lamott

Narrated by: Anne Lamott

Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of Stitches and Help, Thanks, Wow comes her long-awaited collection of new and selected essays on hope, joy, and grace.

Anne Lamott writes about faith, family, and community in essays that are both wise and irreverent. It's an approach that has become her trademark. Now in Small Victories, Lamott offers a new message of hope that celebrates the triumph of light over the darkness in our lives. Our victories over hardship and pain may seem small, she writes, but they change us - our perceptions, our perspectives, and our lives. Lamott writes of forgiveness, restoration, and transformation, how we can turn toward love even in the most hopeless situations, how we find the joy in getting lost and our amazement in finally being found.

Profound and hilarious, honest and unexpected, the stories in Small Victories are proof that the human spirit is irrepressible.

©2014 Anne Lamott (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Lamott is beloved by legions for her smart, irreverent take on the human condition, filtered through her unique brand of compassionate Christianity and delivered with delicious, self-deprecating wit. Lamott goes even deeper in these essays.” (People)

“Anne Lamott is practically a household word in the peeling-back-the-soul department. She's utterly disarming. She's hysterically funny. One minute, you're falling off your chair laughing, and the next, you're gasping for air, because Lamott has just unfurled a sentence that cuts straight to the heart of what you really needed to know. … Lamott is one in a million… Hers is an inimitable mix of irreverence and deep-down holy wisdom. Her wit is so sharp, her synapses fire so quickly, she deftly connects the dots and vaults across the spiritual landscape like nobody else…Lamott grounds the holy in the messy, hilarious, madcap adventure that is her life. And she sees the truth so piercingly perceptibly, we're left slack-jawed and wiser in her wake.” (Chicago Tribune)

“A collection of beautifully written essays, filled with nuggets of wisdom gathered over years of mindful living. The stories tackle some heavy topics… [but] Lamott's candor, and sarcastic, self-deprecating humor lighten the content and engage readers... Her words heal us all.” (Associated Press)

Story telling

So touched by her raw story telling. Her humanness made me want to be a better person. Thank you Anne Lamott

fab

loved it. you get used to her slightly awkward reading style and her stories are such soul food.

fantastic

subtle and hilarious, beautiful wonderful prose
Anne Lamott is a treasure and wise beyond her years

Second or third time

Still as meaningful and wonderful as the first time. So much wisdom in unveiled honesty.

Pick me up

I love Lamott's sense of humor and honesty. She definitely picks me up. Her special talent with words offer solace and fun.

Lamott at her best

If you don’t know Lamott’s voice, you may find it a little off-putting at first. But let yourself become absorbed in her ordinary and remarkable stories and the voice will take you over. Lamott’s self-revealing honesty, her doubts, her quest for faith and love are too humanly familiar and too wise to be ignored. A reader who can’t learn something from this book just isn’t listening.

Enjoyed every minute.

Loved this book, it made me chuckle and gave me comfort to hear about family issues that I can relate to. Beautifully written. I love Anne's perspective.

She is genius

This is beautiful she is nothing short of a National treasure! Her prose is stunning!
I love it!

Best Book Anne has ever done.

Where does Small Victories rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I love memoirs read by those who wrote it and lived it. Anne is incredible at this.

What did you like best about this story?

This book will have you laugh out loud, cry tears of sadness, and leave you with a sense of the profound grace of God in our lives and relationships.

What about Anne Lamott’s performance did you like?

Anne intentionally does not "ham it up," but reads the script of her life and shares her heart with such warmth and honesty that it takes your breath away, She is a professional writer, not a professional reader, so I only give her 4 stars for performance.But she is still great.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

I would not do a film of this book. Films are not the evolutionary goal of writing books.

Any additional comments?

I do not agree with Anne in her politics at all. As one person said,"I find them abhorrent." But I do not have to agree with Anne to love her. And I do. I have listened to or read almost all of her books. This one I have enjoyed the most. If you have followed Anne and thought her better days were behind her,,,,well you are so wrong, This book is her best, most honest, enjoyable and uplifting book yet.

Really a "best of" -- so every one of them excellent

I'd read some of these essays before -- but then I've read practically everything the woman's written, including columns in the early days of Salon.com and her Twitter feed. But I was loving this one so much (both via audiobook, in Anne's own voice, and Kindle) that before I was 2/3s through, I gave a hard copy edition to a friend who I felt needed it like a warm hug. And then I got the hug! Grace.