Editors Reads Verdict
Lamott continues in the vein of Traveling Mercies with the same warm, funny, irreverent voice — the essays on the Iraq War, on her son Sam's adolescence, and on the specific texture of her faith in middle age are the best she has written.
What We Loved
- The essays on Sam's adolescence are some of the most honest writing about parenting available
- Lamott's political anger, especially about the Iraq War, is expressed with humor rather than sanctimony
- The continuity with Traveling Mercies makes it feel like a chapter in a life rather than a standalone book
Minor Drawbacks
- Best read after Traveling Mercies — the context of the earlier book enriches these essays considerably
- Some readers find the explicitly political sections less interesting than the personal and spiritual ones
Key Takeaways
- → Faith in middle age is not the certainty of youth but the practice of presence with doubt
- → Parenting adolescents is a form of spiritual practice in powerlessness
- → Plan B — the life you didn't plan and didn't choose — is often where grace is actually located
| Author | Anne Lamott |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Riverhead Books |
| Pages | 308 |
| Published | March 29, 2005 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir, Spirituality, Essays |
When Plan A Fails
The title of Anne Lamott’s follow-up to Traveling Mercies is also its thesis: Plan B is the life you live when Plan A — the life you intended, the marriage you expected to last, the country you thought you understood — has failed or been taken away. The essays in this collection are Lamott in her early fifties, with a teenage son, a country at war she considers a moral catastrophe, and a faith that is still very much a work in progress.
The book was published in 2005, during the Iraq War, and Lamott’s response to the political climate is threaded throughout the collection. She does not moderate her views for a general audience — her opposition to the war and to the administration conducting it is direct — but she expresses it with enough humor and self-awareness to avoid the preachy quality that political essays often acquire. The chapter in which she tries to pray for George W. Bush and finds herself unable to is one of the book’s funniest and most honest.
Sam
The essays about her son Sam’s adolescence are the book’s emotional center. Sam is fifteen, and Lamott’s account of the specific textures of this relationship — the simultaneous intensity and withdrawal, the fear and the love, the helplessness of watching someone you made become someone you don’t fully know — is as good as any writing about parenting in the contemporary literature.
What gives these essays their depth is Lamott’s application of her theological vocabulary to the experience of parenting a teenager: the radical powerlessness, the necessity of letting go, the practice of watching someone make their own mistakes. These are the conditions, she argues, under which she has actually learned what faith means.
A Companion Volume
Plan B works best read alongside Traveling Mercies — the two books are less a sequence than a continuing conversation with herself, her readers, her faith, and her life. The voice is identical: warm, funny, self-deprecating, and capable of moving from laughter to genuine emotion within a single paragraph.
Our rating: 4.3/5 — A worthy companion to Traveling Mercies — Lamott in middle age, still funny, still doubting, still finding grace in the specific, ordinary mess of her actual life.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" about?
Anne Lamott's follow-up to Traveling Mercies — personal essays on faith, doubt, aging, the Iraq War, her son's adolescence, and the ongoing attempt to live with grace when plan A has clearly failed.
What are the key takeaways from "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith"?
Faith in middle age is not the certainty of youth but the practice of presence with doubt Parenting adolescents is a form of spiritual practice in powerlessness Plan B — the life you didn't plan and didn't choose — is often where grace is actually located
Is "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" worth reading?
Lamott continues in the vein of Traveling Mercies with the same warm, funny, irreverent voice — the essays on the Iraq War, on her son Sam's adolescence, and on the specific texture of her faith in middle age are the best she has written.
Ready to Read Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith?
Check the current price on Amazon.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)Prices and availability are subject to change. See Amazon for current price.
Review last updated: