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A review by halthemonarch
Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
4.0
The story follows two Chinese-American sisters, Xiao-mei who went by either Lucia or Lucy Bok and Jie who went mostly by Miranda Bok, and the people that float in and out of their lives. Yonah, Lucia’s first husband, Stefan, Miranda’s husband, Manuel, Lucia’s boyfriend, Esperanza, their daughter together, and Manuel’s family, as well as Lucy’s friends from work or the hospital. We see every side of their relationship together as sisters, from the budding youths who were thick as thieves, and still were always shades of who they’d later become— to adults who barely spoke, their relationship strained by Lucia’s illness and Miranda’s tremendous anxiety. The siblings love each other fiercely but are unable to show i, a common modern tragedy. Though Miranda doesn’t understand why her sister would up and marry someone so much older and from such a different culture, she supports her and is happy for her; tries her best to let her sister live her life. Yonah is a Jewish immigrant who had a son and daughter from a previous union. Sometime later Lucia decides to leave Yonah seemingly on a whim to fulfill her growing need to become a mother. She meets Manny and the Vargas boys, Hermosa Susi and the others. Nipa and Coco figure into Lucia’s life as friends from her hospital stays. In her early twenties, Lucia began hearing voices and being convinced of certain truths. When she was twenty-six, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and sentenced to medication for the rest of her life under threat of insanity. She always struggled with what she perceived as real and not real, and the amount of control she allowed her sister and the men in her life to have over her.
Meanwhile, Jie is married in Switzerland with her doctor husband, Stefan, who is almost insufferable in his pragmatism masked by empathy and children of his own from a previous marriage. Lucia is pregnant and shortly after she gives birth she has a mix of a postpartum reaction and an episode. Jie is forced to let Manny in on what’s going on and Lucia is committed against her will, the first fissure of many between the sisters as Jie is the one to sign the papers. Manuel doesn’t fully grasp the illness. He is young and selfish , and scared all the time. Scared of immigration and the possibility of deportation without his daughter or belongings, and scared he’ll be left to raise Esperanza all on his own if her mother is loco. Once Lucia is stabilized, Manny hints at marriage for the sake of his green card, or perhaps his mother and brother Freddy (Gourdito) getting the medical attention he needs. He doesn’t love her, in truth, in most of his POVs he treats Lucia as a chore to be tended, a tap tobe turned off. In counter, Lucia proposes they move to Ecuador with the money they’ve collected and build a casita on his mother’s land. They go when Esperanza is three or four and aren’t hounded about marriage again until Esperanza is nearly nine and Lucia’s pregnant again with a baby she eventually miscarries. Duing their relationship, the two quickly fall out of love if there was ever love between them in the first place. Lucia’s writing, independance, and creativity is important to her. She persists on the suggestion to start a small business or to build. new structure onto the house because it isn’t like an American to sit still. To her laundry business idea, Manny says “What will the women do [while you’re doing their laundry]?” it left her speechless, unable to articulate how trapped it made her feel.
She began to work for a newspaper on Cuenca off of her credentials from New York, but the lonely and loveless nature of her life got her to start thinking. She arrived at the fact that she had traded her soulmate for a child and jerkily, hazily began to justify and then plot moving with Esperanza to Israel, a scheme which needed Manuel’s signature on Esperanza’s exit papers. Jie is called and immediately she sees what her sister is trying to do and flies to Ecuador to stop her. Miranda quashes the plan and admonishes Lucia in secret, and neither Esperanza nor Manuel know what her sister was really planning to do. Miranda is warned to stay out of Lucy’s life…
Years pass and news that Nipa’s marriage failed saddens her. The passage of time is stark here where things are in their final stages. Yonah’s prostate cancer spread to his whole body and in his final moments, Lucia goes to him. I think they’re in Ohio? God, I don’t remember but it’s somewhere in the states because Yonah had a business and two homes. The last months of his life the two catch up and they are obviously still devoted to each other. Jie visits to say goodbye, and this is the first time the sisters have spoken since she stopped her sister from kidnapping her niece. Their relationship defrosts in time for the final chapter. Lucia’s death is left ambiguous. Either the grief of Yonah’s death drove her to such lengths as to kill herself, or it was a mere accident. Either way she was found frozen to death beneath a tree. Esperanza was ten years old. Much, much later when Esperanza is in the Big Apple to start college, Tia Miranda meets with her and speaks with her about her mother.
She always said if she went to visit Yonah, she wouldn’t be able too come back. I think Lucia’s death was a suicide out of deeply devoted grief that, I think, could have only been stopped if Esperanza was there with her. I didn’t expect the book to end this way, I honestly thought the sisters would make up in some grand way, but books aren’t movies and you don’t always get a happy ending. This was a book about fragility, familial love, mental illness, and how tough it is to be connected to one another, but how absolutely vital it is. It was a beautiful book, definitely worth reading for the diverse points of view.
Meanwhile, Jie is married in Switzerland with her doctor husband, Stefan, who is almost insufferable in his pragmatism masked by empathy and children of his own from a previous marriage. Lucia is pregnant and shortly after she gives birth she has a mix of a postpartum reaction and an episode. Jie is forced to let Manny in on what’s going on and Lucia is committed against her will, the first fissure of many between the sisters as Jie is the one to sign the papers. Manuel doesn’t fully grasp the illness. He is young and selfish , and scared all the time. Scared of immigration and the possibility of deportation without his daughter or belongings, and scared he’ll be left to raise Esperanza all on his own if her mother is loco. Once Lucia is stabilized, Manny hints at marriage for the sake of his green card, or perhaps his mother and brother Freddy (Gourdito) getting the medical attention he needs. He doesn’t love her, in truth, in most of his POVs he treats Lucia as a chore to be tended, a tap tobe turned off. In counter, Lucia proposes they move to Ecuador with the money they’ve collected and build a casita on his mother’s land. They go when Esperanza is three or four and aren’t hounded about marriage again until Esperanza is nearly nine and Lucia’s pregnant again with a baby she eventually miscarries. Duing their relationship, the two quickly fall out of love if there was ever love between them in the first place. Lucia’s writing, independance, and creativity is important to her. She persists on the suggestion to start a small business or to build. new structure onto the house because it isn’t like an American to sit still. To her laundry business idea, Manny says “What will the women do [while you’re doing their laundry]?” it left her speechless, unable to articulate how trapped it made her feel.
She began to work for a newspaper on Cuenca off of her credentials from New York, but the lonely and loveless nature of her life got her to start thinking. She arrived at the fact that she had traded her soulmate for a child and jerkily, hazily began to justify and then plot moving with Esperanza to Israel, a scheme which needed Manuel’s signature on Esperanza’s exit papers. Jie is called and immediately she sees what her sister is trying to do and flies to Ecuador to stop her. Miranda quashes the plan and admonishes Lucia in secret, and neither Esperanza nor Manuel know what her sister was really planning to do. Miranda is warned to stay out of Lucy’s life…
Years pass and news that Nipa’s marriage failed saddens her. The passage of time is stark here where things are in their final stages. Yonah’s prostate cancer spread to his whole body and in his final moments, Lucia goes to him. I think they’re in Ohio? God, I don’t remember but it’s somewhere in the states because Yonah had a business and two homes. The last months of his life the two catch up and they are obviously still devoted to each other. Jie visits to say goodbye, and this is the first time the sisters have spoken since she stopped her sister from kidnapping her niece. Their relationship defrosts in time for the final chapter. Lucia’s death is left ambiguous. Either the grief of Yonah’s death drove her to such lengths as to kill herself, or it was a mere accident. Either way she was found frozen to death beneath a tree. Esperanza was ten years old. Much, much later when Esperanza is in the Big Apple to start college, Tia Miranda meets with her and speaks with her about her mother.
She always said if she went to visit Yonah, she wouldn’t be able too come back. I think Lucia’s death was a suicide out of deeply devoted grief that, I think, could have only been stopped if Esperanza was there with her. I didn’t expect the book to end this way, I honestly thought the sisters would make up in some grand way, but books aren’t movies and you don’t always get a happy ending. This was a book about fragility, familial love, mental illness, and how tough it is to be connected to one another, but how absolutely vital it is. It was a beautiful book, definitely worth reading for the diverse points of view.