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A review by bellatora
We Could Be Beautiful by Swan Huntley
2.0
Catherine is the living embodiment of Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth’s quote, “I mean it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?” In fact, Catherine would fit snuggly into the Bluth family. Unfortunately, this book is not a comedy. Her shallow obliviousness appears to be played straight.
Don’t get me wrong, I like unreliable narrators and villainous protagonists. They can be interesting. What I don’t like is a character that is only blandly insufferable and a narrative that rewards their poor behavior.
It is not a good sign when I am rooting for the sinister, misogynistic con artist over the heroine. I didn’t like William (her fiance who it is immediately clear is Up to No Good) either and wanted to see him go down, but I was rooting for him to take Catherine with him.
The author tried to give Catherine “pet the dog” moments by making her marginally less horrible than her mother and sister (for example, she learned the staff’s names). But you can’t buy me off with an occasional bone. I don’t care that you give your staff healthcare, Catherine. You still threw your last undocumented maid out when she got sick, refusing to provide any accommodations and letting her go die in poverty. No good intentions in the world can help you recover from that moment.
So you can have an unlikeable main character, but when the tension is whether someone is trying to do her harm, and the reader is rooting for that harm to be done, then something has gone awry. Usually authors solve the problem of the villainous protagonist by making the bad guy a worse guy than the villainous protagonist or making the villainous protagonist fun or making them do a bad thing for a sympathetic reason. Ripley in the [b:The Talented Mr. Ripley|2247142|The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)|Patricia Highsmith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634841836l/2247142._SX50_.jpg|1817520] and Maud in [b:An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good|40104741|An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good|Helene Tursten|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526077553l/40104741._SX50_.jpg|62169561] are not good people in any sense. But they are protagonists who draw you in. Catherine is not intriguing; she is repulsive.
The bright spot in this novel is Huntley’s deft handling of Catherine’s mother’s dementia. You could feel an intelligent woman trying to claw her way through the haze, sometimes caught in the mists unable to find her way through, sometimes slyly using it to her advantage to hide from questions she doesn’t want to answer.
Don’t get me wrong, I like unreliable narrators and villainous protagonists. They can be interesting. What I don’t like is a character that is only blandly insufferable and a narrative that rewards their poor behavior.
It is not a good sign when I am rooting for the sinister, misogynistic con artist over the heroine. I didn’t like William (her fiance who it is immediately clear is Up to No Good) either and wanted to see him go down, but I was rooting for him to take Catherine with him.
The author tried to give Catherine “pet the dog” moments by making her marginally less horrible than her mother and sister (for example, she learned the staff’s names). But you can’t buy me off with an occasional bone. I don’t care that you give your staff healthcare, Catherine. You still threw your last undocumented maid out when she got sick, refusing to provide any accommodations and letting her go die in poverty. No good intentions in the world can help you recover from that moment.
So you can have an unlikeable main character, but when the tension is whether someone is trying to do her harm, and the reader is rooting for that harm to be done, then something has gone awry. Usually authors solve the problem of the villainous protagonist by making the bad guy a worse guy than the villainous protagonist or making the villainous protagonist fun or making them do a bad thing for a sympathetic reason. Ripley in the [b:The Talented Mr. Ripley|2247142|The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)|Patricia Highsmith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1634841836l/2247142._SX50_.jpg|1817520] and Maud in [b:An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good|40104741|An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good|Helene Tursten|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526077553l/40104741._SX50_.jpg|62169561] are not good people in any sense. But they are protagonists who draw you in. Catherine is not intriguing; she is repulsive.
The bright spot in this novel is Huntley’s deft handling of Catherine’s mother’s dementia. You could feel an intelligent woman trying to claw her way through the haze, sometimes caught in the mists unable to find her way through, sometimes slyly using it to her advantage to hide from questions she doesn’t want to answer.