In the heart of New York City, a group of artistic friends struggles with society’s standards of beauty. At the center are Barb and Lily, two women at opposite ends of the beauty spectrum, but with the same problem: each fears she will never find a love that can overcome her looks. Barb, a stunningly beautiful costume designer, makes herself ugly in hopes of finding true love. Meanwhile, her friend Lily, a brilliantly talented but plain-looking musician, goes to fantastic lengths to attract the man who has rejected her—with results that are as touching as they are transformative.
To complicate matters, Barb and Lily discover that they may have a murderer in their midst, that Barb’s calm disposition is more dangerously provocative than her beauty ever was, and that Lily’s musical talents are more powerful than anyone could have imagined. Part literary whodunit, part surrealist farce, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty serves as a smart, modern-day fairy tale. With biting wit and offbeat charm, Amanda Filipacchi illuminates the labyrinthine relationship between beauty, desire, and identity, asking at every turn: what does it truly mean to allow oneself to be seen?
Chapel Hill college student Maria finds herself in a difficult and familiar predicament—unexpectedly pregnant at nineteen. Still reeling from the fresh discovery of her mother’s diagnosis with cancer, Maria’s decision to give her daughter up for adoption is one that seems to be in everyone’s best interest, especially when it comes to light that the child’s father hasn’t exactly been faithful to her following the birth of her daughter. So when her mother proposes an extended trip to sleepy coastal town Beaufort—the same town that the adoptive couple Maria chose for her daughter just happens to live in—Maria jumps at the chance to escape.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Maria finds herself listless and bored soon after her arrival in Beaufort, and a summer job seems like a cure. She has kept close watch on the couple she chose to adopt her daughter—they live mere blocks away—and, as fate would have it, accepts a position as their nanny. Maria ingratiates herself into the family—hesitantly, at first, and then with all the heartbroken (and eventually self-destructive) fervor of a mother separated from her child.
Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, first ignites her lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer. Living in the poor, segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in printed matter as an escape from her dour surroundings. She earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson College in Austin, only to return over-qualified to the menial labor offered by her hometown’s racially-biased employers.
Ivoe eventually flees the Jim Crow South with her family and settles in Kansas City, where she and her former teacher and lover, Ona, found the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam! On the Vine. In the throes of the Red Summer—the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest—Ivoe risks her freedom, and her life, to call attention to the atrocities of segregation in the American prison system.
What do you think? Have you read any of them? Should I keep them on my TBR list or drop them? Let me know. Or if you have any titles you think I should add to my TBR list, let me know as well. Ta for now. Happy reading!!
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing! I want that middle book - I'm from Chapel Hill originally, so I'm curious to read it :)
Caroline, thanks! I'm glad you found a new book to covet :)
The cover of The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty would make me pick it up without even reading further!
Lisa, it does, right? That's how I felt before I even knew what it was about - LOL!
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