Book Review: Craving Grace

I have long been torn about memoirs.  They are the Reality Shows of the literary world, more compelling and plot-driven than serious non-fiction, more personal than a biography, and more real than a novel.  They seem to sell well when they are written by someones who are young and attractive.  And yet, I have always wondered, shouldn't memoirs be the province of the old, the experienced?  Might not a lesson learned in youth be told with even greater depth and perspective after a lifetime of reflection?  Is it just symptomatic of our youth-worshipping culture that we'd rather read the wisdom of a cute, witty 20-something than that of a wrinkled octogenarian?

It was with these conflicts in mind that I found out my friend Lisa Velthouse was publishing a second memoir.  On the one hand, I thought, could she possibly know enough to fill two books?  She's as young as I am!  And on the other hand, I thought, I really like her...she's awfully cute and witty...it might be really good...

So I bought a copy of Craving Grace, the story of a fast from sweets that taught Velthouse to savor the sweetness of God.  And then, I had to buy three more, stopping only because more than four seemed excessive.  But I kind of wanted everyone I know to read this book.

Many memoirs are striking in the drama of the circumstances that inspired them.  The very drama that draws us in, however, keeps us aloof.  Oh, so you lost three limbs and still medalled in the 200 meters?  Oh, so you had six failed marriages and learned a great lesson?  Heartwarming, shocking, awe-inspiring, but ultimately hard to relate to on many levels.  What makes Velthouse's book a must-read for, well, everyone is that nothing too momentous happens.  As she comes to know her flawed self, it is not through limb-loss or hard jail time, but through the critical thoughts she has, the judgments she passes in secret.  These are related with such skill that I had several awkward loud-laughing-in-public moments, and yet they are so perfectly normal that the reader cannot get away with distancing herself.  I may never have six failed marriages, but I have judged and criticized and played God, and much less wittily.

Many memoirs—I’m thinking, for example, of Elizabeth Gilbert’s—make their impact by glorifying the baser instincts of the author: self-revelation in the form of self-adoration.  Where Gilbert is proud of what she discovers in herself, Velthouse allows herself to appear stripped, exposed, and diminished, a primed canvas on which we get to witness the artful workings of grace.  As Velthouse becomes aware of grace, so do we.  We begin to believe that although, or because we, too, harbor prideful thoughts and self-reliant tendencies, we too, could become attuned to these constant evidences of grace.

Perhaps most distinctive, however, is what's missing: a sense that Velthouse has now arrived.  In fact, bouncing between two periods, one several years ago and one more recent, the book is at first confusing; does she struggle with some of the same obstacles even years after the fast is completed?  But that is the beauty and the genius of it.  The very arrogance that bugs me about some memoirs is absent here.  Velthouse's experience with grace is not complete after her fast, three years later, or even now that the book is on library shelves and coffee tables and bathroom countertops.  But what she's learned and is learning still is worth writing and worth reading right now, in the still-reeling voice of a 20-something.

As Velthouse so aptly demonstrates, grace is doled out in generous, earth-shattering bits, just enough to overwhelm and humble us time and again.  Perhaps when she is a wrinkled octogenarian, she will have even more insights to share from her journey in grace.  And if so, I, her wrinkled peer, will probably have to buy four copies.