Hard Laughter: A Novel

by Anne Lamott

Book Overview

Anne Lamott's poignant first novel, reissued in an attractive new edition. Writer (and sometime housecleaner) Jennifer is twenty-three when her beloved father, Wallace, is diagnosed with a brain... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0865472807
• Release Date: April 1979
• Publisher: North Point Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Super fun read.

I have read several of Anne Lamott's books, all autobiographical which I love reading and will continue to do so. This will my first read on her fictional side and now I am hooked! This is her first book that she wrote when she was in her early 20's, I believe. I loved they main character and all the others as they deal with the pain and sadness of suffering and death. They use humor to cope and celebrate the beauty of life itself. I found myself laughing and crying all in one paragraph.

love the brutal honesty

How could anyone not love this book (and the author)?!? Never have I read such a brutally honest account of ones life. Anne Lamott's writing is so refreshly sincere. All believers in Christ should rally around Ms. Lamott and encourage her to continue to bare her naked soul to the rest of the world. I read reviews that said she was irreverent, which if you read with a closed mind you may find this to be so, but I found her to be a REAL person, who realizes she is simply saved by God's grace and by nothing she's done on her on. I would encourage everyone to read this book, with and open mind and heart, and check your judgemental mind at the door. Keep it up Anne!

Poignant...

Reading one of Anne Lamott's novels is like taking a refreshing cool bath on the hottest day of the year; it quenches the soul. Additionally, her wonderfully gritty voice resonates from the pages. The story of a family's struggle to keep the happiness going through the most poignant and disarming moments of their lives is insightful, touching and memorable. Hilarious and poignant as ever, Lamott again illustrates how her characters make everything difficult seem worth undertaking. All in all, a wonderful and illuminating read...

Love, not 'morality,' is the soul of this book

Laughter can be forced or cheap or light - and then there are the moments when the laughter is best, usually because there is some equal pressure not to laugh, some pain that is so close it hurts to laugh, but you must anyway. Anne Lamott wrote, what is for me, an exquisite book about an unspeakable time in life - when a parent becomes gravely ill. I believe in these characters - precisely because they aren't predictable or tidy. They have big gaps in their development, like most people do. They fall apart and put themselves back together in unexpected, astonishing ways. Each one survives in spite of and because of their love of one another.It is a book of unusual relationships during the days of an extraordinary time. Lamott introduces each character and their actions with a generous spirit. The reader by turns loves, understands, is appalled by, then forgives and loves again each of them.I hated to leave them when the book was over. I wanted to have a beer with them, to take a walk on the beach with them, to laugh with them long and hard at how much life hurts sometimes - and how grand it is to be alive.I recommend this book to anyone who knows the pain and joy of loving extraordinary people. If you want a large-hearted soul to spend time with, read Anne Lamott's "Hard Laughter" - you won't be disappointed.

Honest, funny and on the mark

This book handles some difficult territory as only Anne Lamott could. She can be brutally honest and hilarious all at the same time. That she could bring that quality to the nightmarish experience of watching a loved one battle cancer -- something all too many of us know about firsthand -- sets this book apart. One of the previous reviewers found this book "distasteful." Well, there is nothing tasteful about cancer and the way it shatters one's way of life. I know of no other book that touches on the confusion and the anguish and the humanity of that experience like this one does. This is very worthwhile reading.

Hard Laughter - A Moving and Funny Novel about Family Pain

I stumbled onto Anne Lamott while grocery shopping. Marginally coping with a new baby and a three year old I picked up "Operating Instructions-A Journal of My Son's First Year" and threw it into my cart. It quickly became my book of "daily affirmations" for the less than perfect parent. With hopeful anticipation I searched for more of her writing and found "Hard Laughter". I wasn't disappointed. The characters came alive and I realized the author was writing about her own family. These were the same voices I had grown to like so much in her journal. Once again her imperfect, humorous, messy, love-filled life lifted my spirits. I laughed even as I read of her father's diagnosis and treatment of brain cancer. The only disappointment was that it ended too soon and I had to leave the characters I felt I knew so well. I can't wait for more Lamott