Operating Instructions

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Bird by Bird brings her brilliant combination of humor and warmth to a 'smart, funny, and comforting' chronicle of single motherhood (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

It’s not like she’s the only woman to ever have a baby. At thirty-five. On her own. But Anne Lamott makes it all fresh in her now-classic account of how she and her son and numerous friends and neighbors and some strangers survived and thrived in that all important first year. From finding out that her baby is a boy (and getting used to the idea) to finding out that her best friend and greatest supporter Pam will die of cancer (and not getting used to that idea), with a generous amount of wit and faith (but very little piousness), Lamott narrates the great and small events that make up a woman’s life.

'Lamott is a wonderfully lithe writer .... Anyone who has ever had a hard time facing a perfectly ordinary day will identify.' —Chicago Tribune