The American author’s 20th book reads as a series of parables on grace. In an interview, she reflects on a life she thought she wouldn’t get to live

When I speak with Anne Lamott, she is in a “hotel-motel” in Ypsilanti, Michigan, halfway through a cross-country book tour, flaunting sparkly pink nails. The manicure was part of a coping strategy initiated in response to a bad review – “seriously the worst review” of her life, said Lamott. No matter that Somehow: Thoughts on Love , her 20th book, is cresting the New York Times’ bestseller list – a by a prominent critic can still capsize her day.

But this is Anne Lamott, known for her preternatural ability to uncover grace in all her trials, from the trivial to the existentially unmooring. Lamott has found Christ-like qualities in a colicky baby, self-love in the abyss of addiction, and even ways to shepherd her own neuroses when they arrive at the writing desk like damaged relatives “with their weird coppery breath”.

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Radical honesty isn’t for the faint-hearted, but it’s one of the greatest joys I’ve ever discovered

I never used to think of myself as a liar. I always saw myself as an honest person. The only time I’d ever veer from the truth was to protect someone’s feelings. But that wasn’t really lying , I would tell myself , it was an act of kindness!

And then I had a therapy session, where I realised that all of this was actually people-pleasing behaviour and it turned out I was a prolific liar. Not only that, but according to my therapist, by constantly hiding my true feelings to protect those I loved, I was blocking them from ever getting to know the real me and creating true intimacy.

Radhika Sanghani is a writer and author. Her children’s book The Girl Who Couldn’t Lie is published on 9 May

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Lily’s bringing in six figures but Michelle earns less than half that. Who needs to change their ways? You decide who’s in the wonga
More money disputes where you can be the judge

She’s richer, more money-focused, and a bit obsessive over spending

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Staying close to friends isn’t always easy. From calling out flakiness to singing together in a choir, experts share their advice on how to keep the spark alive

There is no getting around it, you have to make time to be a good friend. According to Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford and author of Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships , we need to spend the equivalent of nine minutes a day to maintain a healthy relationship with our closest network of friends, which he admits is “barely time to raise your coffee cup to each other”, so one meet-up a week is more realistic. If you fail to do that, “the friendship starts to decay”, says Dunbar.

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It’s a shame your friend has started making jokes like this, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith . But there’s a way to put a stop to this dynamic

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I confided in a friend that my husband doesn’t contribute much financially – barely at all given mental health issues. Now I think the friend disrespects my husband. He and my husband have had their own direct friendship for some time now, which is especially important for my husband as he moved to a new city and appreciates this friendship.

The financial imbalance between my husband and I has definitely been a sore point and cause of stress for us. We are working through it and we are hopeful to get things moving in a better direction.

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Remember the good old days when you could get on a train or go to a party without wondering if it was worth the risk? It’s time for a revival

In a series of deft manoeuvres that remain fascinating to me, my 16-year-old son managed to barter me down from a four-day trip to Devon to 13 hours in Broadstairs on the Kent coast, during which every train, meeting and arrangement was a white-knuckle ride, as to miss one would render the entire thing, plus the weeks either side of it, some variation of pointless. But we caught every train, we made every meeting, and he watched Match of the Day with his friend while I went to an Afrobeats club night with mine. In the morning he ate vegan bacon in record time, while I studiously didn’t mention how incredibly tired I was, and then he had the brass neck to complain about sleep deprivation all the way home. But by then I wasn’t tired any more, because I’d had a huge, adrenalised revelation: this whole escapade had a pre-pandemic feel.

Long Covid aside, the coronavirus hangover has been subtle, in a bad way. In summer 2020, it looked as if it might bring about big changes: maybe we would come out of it recognising which jobs really mattered and stop equating people’s pay with their value to society, the last would be first and society would cohere again. Maybe we would come to understand what we preferred, between getting on a plane and hearing birdsong, between going to the office and making sourdough (I prefer the office, which is annoying, as I do not have an office job), and there would be no “back to normal”, but instead, a thoughtful rebuilding of life along different lines. All of that was bollocks.

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We often wind up with feelings of obligation towards our work, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But ask yourself: would your employer think the same?

I work for a small company; there are just three of us . My boss, who is the owner of the company, hired me to manage it while she stepped back before having her first child. She’s since had a second child. At the start, I loved my job. It represented security after several rocky years . But as time has gone on, I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with my job and the industry I work in. I desperately want to leave.

I’ve been working on a side gig for 12 months in my free time and it’s starting to take off. If I had extra time to spend on it, it would make a huge difference. My dream would be to take a part-time, mindless job to help pay the bills , but I feel trapped in my current position. My boss is stressed. She’s struggling to cope with parenthood and being the main breadwinner in her household. If I left, I would put her in a difficult position. While we’re not close friends , we have become friends of a sort over the years, and I am aware of how much she has to deal with at home. Of course, I could just wait and see how things pan out, but every day I get more fed up and depressed about having to do a job I resent and am bored by.

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Hannah, 41, and Izzy, 42, met in a nightclub before starting the same college course in the 90s. They both live in Suffolk and remain friends and soulmates two decades later

When Hannah was 16, she loved going to her local under-18s nightclub to dance to alternative music. “In the summer of 1999, I was getting ready to start my BTec in media studies. I was living with my parents in Ipswich, working part-time and having lots of fun going out,” she says.

One night, she spotted Izzy at the club and mistook her for someone she knew. “I approached her and asked if she knew my brother,” she remembers. She said no, but they got chatting and realised they were both enrolled on the same college course. “I was living with my mum and working for a bakery,” says Izzy. “We didn’t have mobile phones at the time, so we never swapped numbers.”

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It’s not easy to maintain the closeness of relationships of our youth but Abigail Dean will always make time for the friend she grew up with

In early 2006, when I was 17, I was admitted to a well-known psychiatric hospital in the UK, an institution most associated with models and footballers. I was neither. I was a schoolgirl who had suffered from either a chemical imbalance in the brain or a series of poor life decisions, depending on who you asked. For two months I was to live in a small pink room with immovable furniture, and attend every therapy on offer. I revised for my AS Levels in the communal lounge while people watched television or wept over the evening meal.

On my first day there, snow fell furiously across Derbyshire. My parents live on a big hill in a small village, and were snow-bound. Visiting hours inched around. I resigned myself to two hours of self-pity, listening to the hum of reunions from the surrounding rooms. But 30 minutes before the doors closed, in walked my friend, Ruth, who had got her driving licence just the month before. She was carrying a week’s supply of the worst gossip magazines of the late noughties and a craft kit for homemade cards. I would not spend the evening alone.

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