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A review by callum_mclaughlin
The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley
5.0
“Your imagination can take you to the best and worst places. It is a ship on a sea of dreams and it’s up to you to steer it.”
This book is beautiful and disturbing in equal measure; my very favourite combination in literature when it’s done well. At once a dark and quietly terrifying dystopian and a fascinating exploration of gender roles, it asks us to question the importance we place on physical beauty in women, and the extent to which man is predisposed to revert to violence.
Plot-wise, we follow a group of men after a deadly fungal infection has wiped out all women. They are essentially waiting for inevitable death, listening to stories of the women they have lost. That is until a bizarre new species begins to grow from the bodies of the deceased women; a species they name The Beauty. These two races will rely on each other for survival in extraordinary ways, but this is a fate some are less willing to accept than others.
What follows is a fever dream of events, at once gripping and revolting. Throughout, Whiteley examines what it really means to be human; what we expect of men and women, and how much this is set in stone, with this major theme nicely summed up in the following: “The mark of humanity is how it treats the world and those who share it with us”. After all, the way the men choose to treat The Beauty will define who they are, and the very future of mankind.
There’s also a very strong thread in here about storytelling; both its importance in preserving the past and providing hope for the future, as well as the responsibility of the writer/storyteller to balance truth with their own morals, as shown when one of the characters tells the group’s resident storyteller: “You represent your own morality, and expect us all to agree with it.” I love stories about stories, and again, this element was handled in a beautiful and thought-provoking way.
Whiteley’s prose is rich and gorgeous, creating this new world in an almost hypnotic way. I can’t wait to dive into more of her work.
This book is beautiful and disturbing in equal measure; my very favourite combination in literature when it’s done well. At once a dark and quietly terrifying dystopian and a fascinating exploration of gender roles, it asks us to question the importance we place on physical beauty in women, and the extent to which man is predisposed to revert to violence.
Plot-wise, we follow a group of men after a deadly fungal infection has wiped out all women. They are essentially waiting for inevitable death, listening to stories of the women they have lost. That is until a bizarre new species begins to grow from the bodies of the deceased women; a species they name The Beauty. These two races will rely on each other for survival in extraordinary ways, but this is a fate some are less willing to accept than others.
What follows is a fever dream of events, at once gripping and revolting. Throughout, Whiteley examines what it really means to be human; what we expect of men and women, and how much this is set in stone, with this major theme nicely summed up in the following: “The mark of humanity is how it treats the world and those who share it with us”. After all, the way the men choose to treat The Beauty will define who they are, and the very future of mankind.
There’s also a very strong thread in here about storytelling; both its importance in preserving the past and providing hope for the future, as well as the responsibility of the writer/storyteller to balance truth with their own morals, as shown when one of the characters tells the group’s resident storyteller: “You represent your own morality, and expect us all to agree with it.” I love stories about stories, and again, this element was handled in a beautiful and thought-provoking way.
Whiteley’s prose is rich and gorgeous, creating this new world in an almost hypnotic way. I can’t wait to dive into more of her work.