Everybody loves Anne Lamott – that's the problem

On top of all this, Mattie's little boy is a storm of hostilities, and her daughter displays signs of nervous compulsions. It's a disturbing repetition of the childhood she endured with her irrepressible parents, liberal activists who had projected a front of domestic bliss from a home of dark unhappiness.

Now, the critical mother who was never there for her, needs but won't accept Mattie's help as she slips slowly under the burden of an undiagnosable brain ailment. Far and away the book's greatest strength is its witty insight into the plight of so many women suspended between responsibilities to their children and parents with no time for their own lives.

"I want to kill myself," she tells a friend, "and then get on with my life."

"You don't know yourself well enough to commit suicide," her friend replies. "It would be considered a homicide."

Lamott writes in a kind of emotional shorthand that's instantly decipherable and funny to anyone who's had children – or parents. Her best and most common technique is that sudden flash of rage wedged between sincere longings to love more. In a hilarious scene at the grocery store, for instance, she thinks, "Sometimes having an elderly mother was like having a toddler, only you felt like attacking her more often."

She handles these family tensions with unfailing perception and tenderness, but this is not a story of much action. Indeed, there are times when the plot could move more slowly only if read from right to left. It has the reliable charm of Lamott's voice, though, and eventually a little mystery develops about the moral transgressions of Mattie's charismatic father.

After some sleuthing inspired by a little plastic shoe, she comes to realize that her mother was something of a saint for enduring such a husband and remaining devoted to her children.

If there's a problem here, it stems from a lack of emotional distance between narrator and protagonist. Despite her apparent independence – her loss of parents and husband and best friend – Mattie is never really allowed to be on her own, to grow up, to despair, to be a character outside the coddling embrace of the narrator's affection.

She prays often for guidance and never abandons church, but her theology sounds like a series of Thought-for-the-Day pleasantries, enough to inspire sighs of comic exasperation but not any repentance that would make her uncomfortable – or less self-centered and promiscuous. While those around her suffer real despair and tragedy, Mattie feels bad. Sometimes real bad. She even overeats, threatening her job as a clothing model.

Of course, nobody wants Hester Prynne smoldering under her own guilt and Hawthorne's laser analysis, but it would be satisfying if Mattie could exist in a world that wasn't designed to absolve her of all transgressions with clever quips and bring everything, ultimately, to her satisfaction.

"Blue Shoe" benefits from all of Lamott's usual talents, but it suffers from them too.

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor. Send e-mail comments about the book section to charlesr@csmonitor.com.

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