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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Okay so admittedly it took me until near the end of this book to “get it”, but once I did I was sold. I had already been invested from the prose/writing which is really well done. I still cringe thinking of some of the details/imagery but hey this book is literally what would happen if all men had to suddenly take the role of women and lose their masculinity. It was bound to get gross.
dark
It's definitely a horror novel: it's set in a world inhabited solely by cis people.
"The Beauty" is a thought-provoking horror novel. The story is violent and dark, but the author brings up some very interesting ideas and questions about society. The Beauty are truly creepy, and the author's descriptions were written incredibly well. I will read more of her work.
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
dark
fast-paced
Aliya Whiteley’s The Beauty is truly grotesque— and it needs to be. This body-horror short story explores themes of gender and humanity in up close and personal ways. And at its core, The Beauty reminds us that nature truly does not give a fuck about beauty and hierarchy and all those things we care so much about.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Freaky mushroom book. Weird little guys!!
I received a free review copy of this book via NetGalley. This re-issue of The Beauty also comes packaged with Whiteley's short novel The Arrival of Missives, which I intend to read and review separately.
Sometimes you read a book that defies explanation, that's entirely unlike anything else you've ever read. The Beauty is one of those books, and I have no idea how to talk about it.
Somewhere out in the wilderness, away from the bustle of civilisation, a commune of men gather round a fire to hear tales of the way things are and the way things used to be. All of the women are dead, buried out in the woods where strange yellow mushrooms grow from their graves. All the women are dead everywhere, it seems, and the surviving men don't know how to continue.
What begins as a fairly typical post-apocalyptic setup (though we don't receive any details about what caused this mass death of women or, in fact, whether this has impacted the wider world beyond the small community we're focusing on) very quickly takes a hard left turn into the realms of the weird. The dead women return from their graves in the form of mute mushroom people who the men find almost irresistibly arousing. They cook, and clean, and fuck, and the men begin to bear their mushroom children, and slowly a divide forms in the settlement between those who see this as wrong and those who want to protect the Beauty - and their new way of life - at all costs.
There's a lot of weird fungal body horror at the core of the novel, as the men become pregnant with mushrooms and their genitals shrivel and fall off. The prose is full of an almost visceral disgust regarding all things bodily, weak, dependent. It makes for an interesting read, not least because much of the "horror" here is so clearly a metaphor for pregnancy and the way women's bodies are treated by society. I suspect that for people who have borne children the "horror" of the transformations the men undergo won't feel particularly shocking at all.
The Beauty doesn't give much away, and on the surface it could be quite easy to read it as a simple "what if men weren't the dominant gender?" narrative, but there's much more going on here than that. Beneath the surface *The Beauty* is concerned with how society constructs gender, and how society tells women that they must be beautiful, and nurturing, and kind, and silent, and constantly sexual, always second to men. Atop that it's also about gendered violence and the way in which society enables it and in many ways rewards it.
Any story about a gendered apocalypse that presents gender as a binary inevitably runs into criticisms of being trans-exclusionary. And given that much of the body horror in *The Beauty* lies in what is essentially a forced physical transition of the men I think it's fairly easy to make that criticism here. It's a complicated one, because this is very much an issue inherent to the "gender apocalypse" sub-genre as it currently stands, but I do think Whiteley takes some interesting steps here. Much of the narrative involves setting up binaries - men and women, young versus old, fact versus fable, humanity versus monstrosity, tradition versus progress - and then blurring the lines until it's no longer clear whether there was ever a divide to begin with. This may not land for all readers, as on the surface it presents an understanding of gender that's at best outdated and at worst has been aggressively weaponised by TERFs in the decade since this novella was originally published. But if you're able to look beyond that and give Whiteley the benefit of the doubt, I think there's still a powerful piece of writing here about power, violence, nature, and the way in which stories shape our society.
Sometimes you read a book that defies explanation, that's entirely unlike anything else you've ever read. The Beauty is one of those books, and I have no idea how to talk about it.
Somewhere out in the wilderness, away from the bustle of civilisation, a commune of men gather round a fire to hear tales of the way things are and the way things used to be. All of the women are dead, buried out in the woods where strange yellow mushrooms grow from their graves. All the women are dead everywhere, it seems, and the surviving men don't know how to continue.
What begins as a fairly typical post-apocalyptic setup (though we don't receive any details about what caused this mass death of women or, in fact, whether this has impacted the wider world beyond the small community we're focusing on) very quickly takes a hard left turn into the realms of the weird. The dead women return from their graves in the form of mute mushroom people who the men find almost irresistibly arousing. They cook, and clean, and fuck, and the men begin to bear their mushroom children, and slowly a divide forms in the settlement between those who see this as wrong and those who want to protect the Beauty - and their new way of life - at all costs.
There's a lot of weird fungal body horror at the core of the novel, as the men become pregnant with mushrooms and their genitals shrivel and fall off. The prose is full of an almost visceral disgust regarding all things bodily, weak, dependent. It makes for an interesting read, not least because much of the "horror" here is so clearly a metaphor for pregnancy and the way women's bodies are treated by society. I suspect that for people who have borne children the "horror" of the transformations the men undergo won't feel particularly shocking at all.
The Beauty doesn't give much away, and on the surface it could be quite easy to read it as a simple "what if men weren't the dominant gender?" narrative, but there's much more going on here than that. Beneath the surface *The Beauty* is concerned with how society constructs gender, and how society tells women that they must be beautiful, and nurturing, and kind, and silent, and constantly sexual, always second to men. Atop that it's also about gendered violence and the way in which society enables it and in many ways rewards it.
Any story about a gendered apocalypse that presents gender as a binary inevitably runs into criticisms of being trans-exclusionary. And given that much of the body horror in *The Beauty* lies in what is essentially a forced physical transition of the men I think it's fairly easy to make that criticism here. It's a complicated one, because this is very much an issue inherent to the "gender apocalypse" sub-genre as it currently stands, but I do think Whiteley takes some interesting steps here. Much of the narrative involves setting up binaries - men and women, young versus old, fact versus fable, humanity versus monstrosity, tradition versus progress - and then blurring the lines until it's no longer clear whether there was ever a divide to begin with. This may not land for all readers, as on the surface it presents an understanding of gender that's at best outdated and at worst has been aggressively weaponised by TERFs in the decade since this novella was originally published. But if you're able to look beyond that and give Whiteley the benefit of the doubt, I think there's still a powerful piece of writing here about power, violence, nature, and the way in which stories shape our society.
One of the more grotesque and disturbing things I’ve read in a while, but wildly stunning. Still pretty haunted by it, as well as the additional short story that was included in this edition. Still dwelling on it. Not sure sure what to say yet.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes