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1-Page Summary of Tiny Beautiful Things

Overview

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar is a collection of Strayed’s column, which she wrote for The Rumpus. She responded to troubled readers who were coping with loss and other life problems by giving advice on how to handle those emotions. Her intimate replies schooled both the letter writers and her broader audience on how to handle a range of difficult emotions including heartbreak, depression, jealousy, and grief.

The author of Wild, Cheryl Strayed, often received letters from her readers. These correspondents were people from all walks of life and had problems in their lives. The topics that they discussed included love, loss, death, grief, financial troubles and familial dysfunction. Similarly the advice that the author gave to them was also about being yourself and not hiding your true feelings or identity from other people.

In her book, Cheryl Strayed gives advice to people who are going through a difficult time. She usually draws on her own experiences in order to help other people. For example, she talks about how she was too young when she got married and that it wasn’t the right thing for her at that point in life. She uses this as an example of what not to do while giving advice on divorce or marriage problems because it’s something that happened to her personally before and didn’t work out well for her.

The author often mentions her mother’s death. She died of cancer when the author was in college and it shaped who she became as an adult. The author wasn’t able to graduate from college because she had missed a class, but after six years of lying about having graduated, she finally went back and took that last class so she could officially graduate.

In her writings, Strayed often talks about the sexual abuse she endured as a child. She also describes how her father was an abusive man who abandoned his family when Strayed was six years old. Sometimes she discusses friends’ hardships in her writing; one of these stories is about a dear friend who suffered from burns and killed himself later on.

Besides the difficult experiences, Strayed also writes about more mundane events in her life. Some are happy stories, like her romance with her second husband. Others are frustrating and sad, such as some of the jobs she had before becoming a successful writer. Still others involve ambivalence, like when she decided to have children at age thirty-five. She writes about all these things—her own happiness as well as some of her lowest moments—and how they led up to where she is now.

In the author’s experience, people who write to her for advice are worried about how they treat others. They also worry that they’ll never be happy. The author thinks that if people are willing to make an effort, then yes, they will eventually be happy.

Book Structure

In Tiny Beautiful Things, Strayed shares her personal stories to illustrate the points she wants to make. She uses these stories like parables because they are compelling and dramatic.

The tone of the book is motivational, compassionate, elegiac and humorous. It’s also optimistic because it encourages readers to be their best possible selves. At times, it reads like a sermon or an essay but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lyric quality to it. The author references writing in many ways which makes sense since this was originally published on a literary website.

The author of the book uses a lot of terms of endearment like “honey bun” and “sweet pea.” This is an affectation that makes readers feel less comfortable with her because it seems unnecessary. The author’s generosity comes through in the writing, but she cuts to the chase when answering letters from people who want advice about their problems.