When I first began to read this autobiography, I was confused about what Lucy Grealy really looked like. I still cannot picture her face in my head as it was before her final surgery. Her photo on the back of the book shows a somewhat uneven jaw line but I can still not understand how serious her disfigurement was without looking at a photograph. I tried several times to imagine what life would have been like if I had lived a life like Lucy Grealy. I know that the worst place to have any type of blemish or imperfection is on a person’s face. I am however amazed at her ability to cope with her disappointment after every surgery failed. It must be like winning the lottery and then losing all of the money. To build her hopes up before and after each surgery believing that her life would be better, more livable, just to find herself back where she started must have been devastating. She wrote about how she would try not to hope for anything better and how every time she would do it anyway. I am sure that if she never truly believed that she deserved anything better then she would not have gone through with the surgery every time.
I was quite interested in her philosophies about life and how she interpreted truth and beauty to be within reach even though she never really wrote about finding it except for how she would accept that she was ugly and she knew that she would never find the love that she felt she needed from someone else. This was her truth and every once in a while her truth would crumble with the prospects of another surgery just to come back to the same truth that she began with. After reading this book, I believe that truth and beauty are as individual as the person who seeks it. Just as each person seeks truth and beauty for a different reason.