Tiny Beautiful Things

In the last half of 2015, I didn't quite know it yet but I was about to go through one of the hardest months of my life in a long, long time. And when my downstairs neighbor gave me this book as a parting gift, little did I know that it would be one of the lifeboats that go me through to now. And with that said I feel obliged to offer the caveat that my review is very influenced by how much this book was very well-timed in my life.

It's not a technically perfect book; for me, mostly just in terms of pacing. The letters are divided into sections that seemed at first to be loosely centered on a theme, but by the end I wasn't so sure, and once I passed the halfway point I began to realize that the book is very front-loaded. The stakes in the letters in the first half of the book are high - like, HIGH-high - and Cheryl-as-Sugar's responses are heavily interwoven with stories from her own life that mirror or contrast the plight at hand. These are the most beautiful and moving. More of these high-stakes, heartbreaking, achingly loving letters are peppered throughout the second half, but are much fewer and far between and the rest, though much elevated, veer towards more standard agony aunt fare. Her responses to these are less lyrical, more direct, and weave in her own life story parallels less often. Ultimately, this just poses an issue if you read the book from cover to cover. Reading it in a nonlinear fashion and just opening randomly and jumping from story to story is a very valid way of approaching this book and largely makes this one criticism moot.

And that criticism is such a small one for me. This book fell in my lap exactly when I needed it, and it made me cry when I just needed to cry, it gave me hope when I was completely overwhelmed, and it made me give myself stern talkings-to when I was feeling sorry for myself. I've noticed a few people call out some of her perhaps less-than-ideal advice and have noticed some of her recurring biases, but none of this bothered me or detracted from the experience. Some of these letters had my sides aching with laughter, more of them had me truly ruminating on how we deal with the “big” things in life, more than a few had me weeping fat, rolling tears and some even had me doing all of those things at once. As a piece of writing, it is a resounding success. It is not merely a compiled collection of agony aunt letters. It is a fully realized piece of art grown out of an implicit understanding of the human condition.

The beauty and value in this book is not that Cheryl Strayed is a counsellor or therapist - she is not, and reminds the reader of that multiple times - but rather that it's a vivid demonstration of compassion in its most earnest and genuine sense. These letters are from broken, troubled, lost humans reaching out for a connection, and the responses glow with an altruism and true warmth of spirit. And how many of us have been broken and troubled and lost and looking for some warmth and some unconditional acceptance, and for another human being - even a stranger - to tell us that it's okay to be broken and troubled and lost?