Operating Instructions

Anne Lamott was 35, a new mother and single when she wrote Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year. A recovering alcoholic and coke user whose faith and hilarious sense of humour sustained her, her story makes you laugh, and then cry, and then laugh again. As the year progresses, her prayers are answered often enough that you're tempted to kneel down and try it yourself. That said, her journey is not, of course, a bed of roses; anyone who has been a single mother will recognize the lonely middle of the night vigils described here in a tone that is both conversational and poetic. In the end you sense that her clear-headed insights into the bad stuff have also given her a great capacity to enjoy the good. And there's lots of good. In spite of the thread of self-doubt that runs through it, Operating Instructions is a triumphant story.

You can follow up on Lamott and her son in her subsequent books, many of which also became best sellers, but this one has to be her most touching document of struggling single motherhood having been written, perhaps, before fame and a little money took away some of the sting.

Pantheon Books; New York & San Francisco; 1993