Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy - Hardcover

"Lamott is a superb writer. Her voice is one-of-a-kind: deft, folksy, cheerfully hostile... She is witty and funny and smart... Telling stories so personal even a distant reader can relate." --The Washington Post

"This is trademark Lamott--theological speculation, hippie slang and domestic comedy, C.S. Lewis by way of Janis Joplin by way of Erma Bombeck." --Christian Science Monitor

"Every writer, truth-seeker, parent, and activist I know is in love with one or more books by Anne Lamott... she writes as naturally as she breathes, she explores the mysterious paths and detours of life itself, and she reports back to make the way ahead easier for all of us... I keep learning a lot from the clear and great Annie Lamott. I think you will, too." --Gloria Steinem

"A clarion call to the better angels of our nature." --Chicago Tribune

"A hopeful book for the care and feeding of your soul." --Adriana Trigiani, author of Kiss Carlo

"Best bathtub read for me would be anything by Anne Lamott... She always makes me laugh and she embraces all the broken bits." --Andie McDowell, actress, in W Magazine

"Mercy is complicated, but Hallelujah Anyway does a fabulous job of breaking it down so it's easier to understand. And [Lamott] even paints visual pictures of mercy that help you feel what mercy is." --The Huffington Post

"Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy is a breath of fresh literary air. With a caring and understanding tone, Lamott takes on the overwhelming negativity in today's political and international culture head-on, and gets hands-on in finding humor and hope in between the headlines." --Pacific Sun

"Some books we read for their delicious plots, but others we savor another way. Anne Lamott's Hallelujah Anyway is one you'll slow down to read, so exactly right are her insights. The way to feel whole, she says, is through mercy--an idea as beloved as cheese, yet so tricky when you have to apply it to annoying people. But at this exact moment, we can all agree: It's time for kindness." --Redbook

"Reading Anne Lamott...is like sitting down with a girlfriend you haven't seen for a while." --The Washington Post

"An exploration of mercy as the ultimate and most radical brand of kindness." --Hoda Kotb, Today Show co-host

"Not a book to miss." --Library Journal

"Spiritually enhancing, life-affirming lessons . . . delivers flashes of wisdom and inspiration that resonate." --Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Anne Lamott

"Lamott is beloved by legions for her smart, irreverent take on the human condition, filtered through her unique brand of compassionate Christianity and delivered with delicious, self-deprecating wit. Lamott goes even deeper in these essays." --People

"Anne Lamott is a cause for celebration. [Her] real genius lies in capturing the ineffable, describing not perfect moments, but imperfect ones...perfectly. She is nothing short of miraculous." --The New Yorker

"Lamott is funny, witty and irreverent...Her basic message is love and forgiveness...Not a bad message for any faith." --The Denver Post

"Read this book, whatever your faith. Read it twice." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Anne Lamott is my Oprah.” —Chicago Tribune

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Almost Everything and Bird by Bird, a powerful exploration of mercy and how we can embrace it.

"Mercy is radical kindness," Anne Lamott writes in her enthralling and heartening book, Hallelujah Anyway. It's the permission you give others—and yourself—to forgive a debt, to absolve the unabsolvable, to let go of the judgment and pain that make life so difficult.

In Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy Lamott ventures to explore where to find meaning in life. We should begin, she suggests, by "facing a great big mess, especially the great big mess of ourselves." It's up to each of us to recognize the presence and importance of mercy everywhere—"within us and outside us, all around us"—and to use it to forge a deeper understanding of ourselves and more honest connections with each other. While that can be difficult to do, Lamott argues that it's crucial, as "kindness towards others, beginning with myself, buys us a shot at a warm and generous heart, the greatest prize of all." 

Full of Lamott’s trademark honesty, humor and forthrightness, Hallelujah Anyway is profound and caring, funny and wise—a hopeful book of hands-on spirituality.