In Pursuit of Beauty

From the mind of acclaimed reporter Gary Baum comes In Pursuit of Beauty, a striking debut novel that examines the nature of truth and allure in our modern world.

What would you endure to fulfill your dreams?

What would you do to have the perfect body?

For Dr. Roya Delshad, the answers are anything and everything. A sought-after Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, Roya is also the highest example of her craft. She's had every inch of her own body sculpted, one procedure at a time. All to escape a painful and lonely past.

But when Roya gives the gift of beauty to those who can't afford the cost, the media labels her "the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive," and she soon finds herself pleading her case from inside a prison cell.

Hoping to resurrect her reputation and obscure a trail of unhappy clients, Roya tells her story with the help of the blithely handsome Wes Easton, a journalist and failed screenwriter who agrees to ghostwrite her memoir. In a twistingly tense pas de deux, Wes struggles to tell fact from fiction, and Roya seeks to explode his notions about aspiration and desire, sending their collaboration off the rails.

A bold, stylish, and provocative thriller about surfaces and their hidden depths, In Pursuit of Beauty explores what it means to become exactly who you once yearned to be.

These discussion questions were provided by the publisher, Blackstone Publishing.

Book club questions for In Pursuit of Beauty by Gary Baum

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Roya positions herself as a victim of misunderstanding, a figure whose transgression “came from an honest place” and was “a reasonable response to the inescapably lookist world we live in — and the more equitable one I think we need to envision.” Having now heard her out, do you agree or disagree with her perspective?

Roya’s memoir serves, in part, as a defense of plastic surgery. She calls it “life changing, cathartic work that allows people to feel born anew,” adding that it constitutes a “rebuke against annihilation, a utopian and very human resistance to decay.” Did she alter your thinking about cosmetic medicine?

Wes expresses his reservations to Roya about channeling her voice and perspective. How did he do? Regardless, should writers inhabit identities not their own?

Roya believes that, like her naturally gorgeous sister Dahlia, Wes can’t comprehend the foundational importance of physical beauty because he, too, was born strikingly attractive — while her own bodily allure is self-made. Is she right?

Dahlia describes both a history of sexual harassment and assaults as well as a form of intimate exploitation by her envious sister. What did you take away from this?

Wes portrays himself as reluctantly seduced by Roya’s wiles. Is that credible?

The Roya we come to know through the memoir that Wes has written is different from the Roya revealed through Wes’s own narrative. What do you make of the dissimilarities between her “authored” and “real” selves?

Wes never gains full access to Roya’s inner life, including the private pain she doesn’t share with him. Why doesn’t she trust him?

Wes says he was changed by his experience with Roya. Was he?

Wes, who highlights his savvy professionalism at the outset of his narrative, acknowledges by its conclusion that Roya “pegged me from the jump.” He explains that she “had reeled me in, beating me at my own game.” Is this true? If so, what has this revealed of his character as well as her own? If not, why does it appear to be true from his perspective?

Wes and Roya’s intense relationship arcs toward an end with seeming mutual affection and respect. What, if any, future might they have in each other’s lives?

The book concludes with Roya’s planned career pivot as an activist, speaker and influencer. She even leaves readers with a soapbox speech. Do you buy it?

In Pursuit of Beauty Book Club Questions PDF

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