Natural Beauty: A Novel
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Fiction
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.
Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.
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Community Reviews
My overall impression of the book is positive, but I have trouble saying that I recommend it or would ever read it again. By that I mean this is a very particular kind of book, not without merits, but maybe not intended for someone like myself.
But let’s start with the good things. The narrator beautifully describes every piece of music that she encounters in such a manner that I imagine only a musician or seasoned listener would be able to. I enjoy listening to music, but the way it is described in this book elevates it in a way I hadn’t previously considered.
The text is also very bingeable. It was only until about a third of the way into the book that I really started caring about what was happening, but once the story advances closer to the climax and more interesting details get revealed, this book is hard to put down. You feel compelled to keep reading to find out what’s really going on and what secrets the end of the book will reveal.
I also liked how the story satirized how far people are willing to go for beauty (as far as putting parasites in their hair or undergoing treatments that can potentially make them seize), how race and age factor into that, and the relationship between self-care and the male-gaze. It’s easy to scoff at the characters as they go through such lengths to be beautiful, but it reminds one of how much effort many people, especially women, go through on a daily basis.
As for the parts that I didn’t like… despite the narrator using very colorful language, there were times that I had to reread passages because the descriptions just weren’t clear enough. The settings and happenings in the book are normal enough to generally understand what’s going on, but sometimes it was a bit too vague. )Interestingly enough, someone in my book club enjoyed the fact that she could add her own details to the story, so I understand how that might appeal to some.)
I also found the narrator’s lax attitude very off-putting and sometimes frustrating. I don’t believe that as a reader I have to like or even agree with the narrator, but there were many times in the book that I simply could not understand her reactions (or rather, lack of reactions). And for that matter, why didn’t people react more when they noticed Asian women turning into carbon copies of stereotypically attractive white women? The narrator had a roommate and regular customers. It’s clear that this wasn’t a case of a woman of color bleaching her hair and wearing color contacts to look a certain way—her entire body changed. And, while I understand the narrator may have reveled in her sudden beauty, the casual attitude she had about, essentially, changing her race was baffling to me. I could suspend my disbelief enough to believe that such a transformation is possible, but maybe not so much that someone undergoing it would treat it so casually.
All in all, this was an interesting read, and there are many moments of beautiful prose and expertly placed foreshadowing. While some of the narrator’s choices may have been baffling to me, they weren’t enough to say the book is not worth reading. If you would like to read about how beauty, race, class, and identity clash—along with lyrical writing and toe-curling body horror—then this may indeed be the book for you.
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