Review: Beautiful You – Chuck Palahniuk

Beautiful You – Chuck Palahniuk

Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he precedes, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of gratification for days on end. What's not to like?

This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of feminine products to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for battery-powered world domination must be stopped. But how?

Review: So . . . I didn’t like this one.

Chuck Palahniuk is a hit-or-miss author for me. Some of his books are amazing. They’re funny, and clever, and slightly offensive, and the social satire is on-point. Beautiful You is mostly just silly. I knew that this book didn’t have the greatest reviews before I read it, but since it was satirizing Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, I couldn’t resist. I expected to love it.

Penny is an ambitious but average employee at a big law firm. One morning, she trips and lands in a puddle of coffee at the feet of Maxwell, the world’s richest man. After the coffee turns her blouse see-through, he promptly invites her to dinner.

“She kept hoping that something would happen to rescue her from her own small-scale, predictable dreams.” – Beautiful You

Penny becomes Maxwell’s lover, which is great, until she discovers that she’s nothing but a lab rat that he uses to test his company’s new line of sex toys. Maxwell plans to use these toys to achieve world domination. After a woman uses one, Maxwell can control her brain for the rest of her life. He can tell her which politicians to vote for, which ugly shoes to buy, and which crappy vampire romance novels to obsess over. Penny has to stop Maxwell before he destroys the world.

From the book description, it sounded like this odd little dystopia would be hilarious, but I mostly wavered between disgust and boredom while reading. Like the erotica that this book is satirizing, Beautiful You is heavy on the unrealistic sex and light on everything else. I haven’t read much erotica because the sex lives of characters don’t interest me, and that’s why I got bored with this book. It’s mostly just sex. I wanted so much more from the characters. The plot also didn’t work for me. The novel completely lost me when Penny climbs Mount Everest to learn the sex secrets of the ancients from the sex witch. The trip feels long and pointless, and I seriously started to question why I was reading this story. If I hadn’t been so close to the end, I wouldn’t have finished it.

I did laugh once. It was when the men try to burn the dildos in a bonfire to get their wives back, but the dildos turn into missiles, shoot out of the fire, and destroy the city. Even though I didn’t like the book, I have to admit, that is funny.

“In her experience every man thought he was a natural dancer, and every one thought he was good in bed. The truth was that most men only knew one dance step—usually the pogo—and between the sheets they were like a monkey in a nature film poking at an anthill with a stick.” – Beautiful You

I think I struggled with this book because I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of reading it. Maybe I was cringing so hard at the magical sex witch that I missed the point. Is the book about the dangers of constantly chasing pleasure instead of doing the un-pleasurable things that are necessary to achieve success? Is it a critique of the gender roles in our society? Honestly, I have no idea. I’ll leave you with some lines from the book that I really like. Maybe you can help me figure it out.

“Artificial over stimulation seemed like the perfect way to stifle a generation of young people who wanted more and more from a world where less and less was available.” – Beautiful You

 

“The future had a way of breaking your heart if you expected too much.” – Beautiful You

 

“She wanted a choice beyond: Housewife versus lawyer. Madonna versus whore. An option not mired in the lingering detritus of some Victorian-era dream.” – Beautiful You

Top Ten Tuesday: Underrated Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is top ten books with fewer than 2000 Goodreads ratings. I tried to pick a diverse selection of under-hyped books for you. I liked all of these and hope that you will, too.  

Ten Good Books with Fewer Than 2000 Ratings

This Side of Providence – Rachel M. Harper (37 ratings)

Arcelia Perez fled Puerto Rico to escape a failed marriage and a history of abuse, but instead of finding her piece of the American dream, she ends up on the wrong side of Providence. With three young children, Arcelia follows a rocky path that ultimately leads to prison and an agonizing drug withdrawal. But her real challenge comes when she’s released and must figure out how to stay clean and reunite the family that has unraveled in her absence. 

Through rotating narrators, we hear from the characters whose lives and futures are inextricably linked with Arcelia’s own uncertain fate: her charming, street-savvy son, Cristo, and brilliant daughter Luz; their idealistic teacher, Miss Valentín, who battles her own demons; and the enigmatic Snowman, her landlord and confidante.

Turn me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers – Frank X. Walker (88 ratings)

Around the void left by the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, the poems in this collection speak, unleashing the strong emotions both before and after the moment of assassination. Poems take on the voices of Evers's widow, Myrlie; his brother, Charles; his assassin, Byron De La Beckwith; and each of De La Beckwith's two wives. Except for the book's title, "Turn me loose," which were his final words, Evers remains in this collection silent. Yet the poems accumulate facets of the love and hate with which others saw this man, unghosting him in a way that only imagination makes possible.

Severance: Stories – Robert Olen Butler (520 ratings)

The human head is believed to remain in a state of consciousness for one and one-half minutes after decapitation. In a heightened state of emotion, people speak at the rate of 160 words per minute. Inspired by the intersection of these two seemingly unrelated concepts, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler wrote sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, capturing the flow of thoughts and feelings that go through a person's mind after their head has been severed.

UnBound – Neal Shusterman (716 ratings)

In the Unwind series, Neal Shusterman thrilled readers with the story of a society that deals with its out-of-control teens by “unwinding” them—transplanting more than 99% of their bodies into other people. 

In the latest installment of this sequence, Shusterman—along with collaborators Terry Black, Michelle Knowlden, Brendan Shusterman, and Jarrod Shusterman—explores even more aspects of a world that has accepted the unacceptable. These short stories examine the world of unwinding in a way we haven’t seen before, providing a fresh framework, new characters, and a different take on some events.

Project X – Jim Shepard (788 ratings)

In the wilderness of junior high, Edwin Hanratty is at the bottom of the food chain. His teachers find him a nuisance. His fellow students consider him prey. And although his parents are not oblivious to his troubles, they can't quite bring themselves to fathom the ruthless forces that demoralize him daily.

Sharing in these schoolyard indignities is his only friend, Flake. Branded together as misfits, their fury simmers quietly in the hallways, classrooms, and at home, until an unthinkable idea offers them a spectacular and terrifying release.

A Guide to being Born: Stories – Ramona Ausubel (1,174 ratings)

In “Atria” a pregnant teenager believes she will give birth to any number of strange animals rather than a human baby; in “Catch and Release” a girl discovers the ghost of a Civil War hero living in the woods behind her house; and in “Tributaries” people grow a new arm each time they fall in love. Funny, surprising, and delightfully strange—all the stories have a strong emotional core; Ausubel’s primary concern is always love, in all its manifestations.

5 to 1 – Holly Bodger (1,260 ratings)

In the year 2054, after decades of gender selection, India now has a ratio of five boys for every girl, making women an incredibly valuable commodity. Tired of marrying off their daughters to the highest bidder and determined to finally make marriage fair, the women who form the country of Koyanagar have instituted a series of tests so that every boy has the chance to win a wife. 

Sudasa doesn’t want to be a wife, and Contestant Five, a boy forced to compete in the test to become her husband, has other plans as well. Sudasa’s family wants nothing more than for their daughter to do the right thing and pick a husband who will keep her comfortable—and caged. Five’s family wants him to escape by failing the tests. As the tests advance, Sudasa and Five thwart each other at every turn until they slowly realize that they just might want the same thing.

Eli the Good – Silas House (1,283 ratings)

Bicentennial fireworks burn the sky. Bob Seger growls from a transistor radio. And down by the river, girls line up on lawn chairs in pursuit of the perfect tan. Yet for ten-year-old Eli Book, the summer of 1976 is the one that threatened to tear his family apart. There is his distant mother; his traumatized Vietnam vet dad; his wild sister; his former war-protester aunt; and his tough yet troubled best friend, Edie, the only person with whom he can be himself. As tempers flare and his father’s nightmares rage, Eli watches from the sidelines, but soon even he cannot escape the current of conflict.

Stay Awake – Dan Chaon (1,951 ratings)

In these haunting, suspenseful stories, lost, fragile, searching characters wander between ordinary life and a psychological shadowland. They have experienced intense love or loss, grief or loneliness, displacement or disconnection—and find themselves in unexpected, dire, and sometimes unfathomable situations.

Review: The Thing About Jellyfish – Ali Benjamin

The Thing About Jellyfish – Ali Benjamin

After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting—things don't just happen for no reason. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory—even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe . . . and the potential for love and hope right next door.

Review: This book taught me so much about jellyfish. Those things are creepy. And, they’re taking over the world. Or, the oceans at least. This makes me glad that I don’t live by the ocean. Colorado has an excellent jellyfish buffer around it, so I don’t have to worry about getting stung to death by something I can barely see.

The Thing about Jellyfish is part science-story, part grief-story. Twelve-year-old Suzy is a natural-born scientist. When her friend, Franny, drowns at the beach one summer, Suzy refuses to believe that Franny’s death was something that “just happened.” She suspects that Franny was stung by a rare and deadly jellyfish, and she’s willing to travel to Australia on her own to prove her theory correct.

This is one of those middlegrade books that I wish had been around when I was a preteen. It beautifully mixes the stages of grief with science facts (two things that go together strangely well), and also tackles the difficult transition from elementary school to middle school. Suzy’s obsession with science has always made her an outcast. Her outcast status becomes even worse when she enters middle school, and her friends all start caring about popularity. No one wants to hang out with a nerd like Suzy. Suzy does not react well to this. She makes some regrettable decisions in an attempt to change her place in the school hierarchy.

“Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can’t even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Suzy is the driving force behind this story. She’s easy to root for because she’s struggling to be herself in a middle school world that doesn’t understand her. She’s also desperately clinging to her jellyfish theory because she doesn’t want her friend’s death to be something that “just happened.” Suzy’s life is depressing, but it never feels completely hopeless. Her journal entries are funny, and she has an amazingly supportive family.

This book is elegant. There is a lot going on in Suzy’s world, which could make the story feel muddled, but it never does. Everything flows together smoothly. It’s impressive. I can understand why this novel has gotten attention from award committees. The book is also ridiculously well-written. This is one of those novels where you can imagine every sentence being typed up in fancy font and plastered all over some hormonal teenager’s Tumblr page.

“A person doesn’t always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

 

“Maybe this is what happens when a person grows up. Maybe the space between you and the other people in your life grows so big you can stuff it full of all kinds of lies.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Occasionally, I felt like the story got a little slow and heavy-handed. I know that this is a middlegrade book, and the author has to be obvious about certain things to get the point across to young readers, but sometimes I felt like the morals were a little too obvious. There were several times where I stopped reading and thought, Okay, everybody gets the point. Move on.

Overall, this is a well-crafted children’s book. It made my animal-loving (and animal-fearing) heart very happy.

The Sunday Post #54

The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to recap the past week, talk about next week, and share news.

Happy 4th!

On The Blog Last Week

• On Monday I reviewed Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson.
• On Tuesday I listed some words that make me buy books.
• On Wednesday I reviewed The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin.
• On Thursday I told you what I’ve been up to in June.

On The Blog This Week

• On Monday I review The Thing about Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin.
• On Tuesday I list some underrated books.
• On Wednesday I review Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk.
• On Thursday I wrap up June.

In My Reading Life

Slightly more reading has been happening lately. Last week, I read Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. I’m currently reading Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. I’ve now also written over 200 reviews on Goodreads. That is a lot of bookish ramblings!

In The Rest Of My Life

Five things that made me happy last week:

1. Pizza.
2. I turned in my first big assignment of the semester.
3. I had more time than usual for reading.
4. There were a few days that weren’t stupidly hot.
5. Catching up on this season’s episodes of The Simpsons.

I hope you had a good week! I’ll see you around the blogosphere!