Customer Reviews

Beautiful Bodies : A Novel

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Men as well as women will love this scintillating, hilarious, yet moving story of six women friends who gather on one frigid night. This is incredibly candid, even sensual but never coarse. This is truly as unusual as the reviews indicate: a literate novel of women of the city and their deepest needs and feelings. My sister bought it and I borrowed it...We are quoting already...A soon to be classic of modern angst and love among the denizens of the dark heart of the asphalt jungle. New York ( and Every City) glitters, glowers and glows...I love these women, whose souls are as beautiful as their 'bodies"...A sensitive introspective yet funny book.

The six best friends of the title have, I think, more beautiful spirits than bodies. That's what makes them great -- they are not falsely glamorized. they are very real, especially to me. I am sure I know these women, maybe I am one -- the one who throws the dinner party and is not ready and throws her cellphone out the window rather than wait for her new guy to call! I identify! They are true human beings,with funny idiosynchrasies who make mistakes and their friendships wax and wane, through 15 years and the one night that is the setup for this EXTREMELY FUNNY NOVEL. I wish I was a writer so I could adequately explain how much I enjoyed this , how smart it is and how uplifted it made me feel about myself, my best friends, the men, the one nighters and even my ex-husband! This is humanity, at its best, the fact that it makes you howl and cry is a triumph. I personally thought Martha the funniest creation, Lisbeth the most enduring...I wanted to be there with them. This is the real book, Girlfriends. Don't miss it!

BEAUTIFUL BODIES by Laura Shaine Cunningham is a "chick book" that I normally wouldn't pick up on a bet. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the author's two previous volumes of memoirs, SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS and A PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, and we've exchanged emails of mutual admiration, so I bit down on my emery board and got on with it. Just between you and me, I'm glad I did. But I'm left wondering if I need testosterone replacement therapy.

The plot tells you right off that it's not a book for Real Men. Six female pals in their mid-30s living in New York gather at a private dinner party at the apartment of one to have a baby shower for another. Baby shower? Yikes!

Jessie, the hostess, is a successful journalist still in the post-coital afterglow of an affair out in Colorado with one of her subjects. Nina, a chronic dieter and the primary caregiver for her dying mother, owns a nail salon. Nina is also fresh off an afternoon tryst with someone she met in her apartment building's laundry room, a New Age Sensitive Fella who invited her up for herbal tea ("Celestial Seasonings"). Sue Carol, a waitress and struggling thespian with a substance abuse problem, has just left her adulterous husband. Sue Carol savors all the little dramas in her life - they'll make her a better actress. Lisbeth, an ethereal, anorexic artist/model pining after a lost (and married) lover, spends a significant portion of her energy staving off her landlord's efforts to evict her from her rent-controlled apartment. Martha, a real estate agent obsessed with her exorbitant earnings and the material goodies they buy, has meticulously planned to have a child with her fiance, but has just learned that she's sterile. And lastly, Claire, the mother-to-be. Claire is an independent, free-spirited musician - she plays the krummhorn - who's happily made a world for herself in an 18 by 20 foot room in a local residence for women. She's blissfully happy with her pregnancy and the prospect of being a single mother. The baby's father, a global wanderer, may never be seen again.

For me, the chief fascination of BEAUTIFUL BODIES was in watching the nuances and shifting dynamics of the relationships between the six women as they come together on a winter night to celebrate Claire's impending motherhood and share secrets. For example, Nina is the first to show up at Jessie's apartment. Later, Lisbeth is the second guest to arrive, and:

"When a third woman enters the room, it is clear which two women are the closer friends. Triangles always come to a point."

And still later, as the assembled group sits for dinner:

"The others had taken their places, as the (place) cards indicated .... The lines were drawn. The dull knives waited."

For me, a simple guy, this is potentially scary stuff. My two favorite players are Jessie and Martha. Jessie, who desperately tries to keep her party on track in the face of spoken anxieties and revealed confidences. Jessie, whose own angst is growing. (Her new lover did promise to call at 8:00 PM, didn't he? Was he turned off my her mastectomy scar?) And Martha, whose catty criticisms comprise a potential flamethrower in an atmosphere of volatile emotions.

BEAUTIFUL BODIES is a wonderful, poignant, funny, touchy-feely book totally unsuitable for a troglodytic male unless he wants a brief glimpse into the female psyche. Having just been there, I think I'll regain a masculine perspective by having a beer with the Boys. If they'll still admit me to the Clubhouse, that is.

As a single woman, aged 35, living in a big city but not New York, I was breathless from start to finish. I did not stop reading this book for a day and a half. Went without sleep. For me, this is the first book that describes a world I know, a life I lead. I identified completely with Jessie, the woman who must throw the party - and clean the cat box, cook the meal & and is so totally distracted yet pulls it off. A loving spirit infuses the very exciting sex with so much more than I accustomed to finding in a "great read." The stories are truthful, hilarious and heart breaking. Laugh, cry, lend to your best friend, your sister, your mother. A true depiction of female friendhip. I fell in love with the book, hope it is a movie or a tv series. Out-sexes sex and the city, with compassion for its characters.

If you read no other book this summer, snatch this one -- Beautiful Bodies is populated with savvy, sexy women who maneuver in today's asphalt jungle. New York has never been depicted better, with its great strengths and weaknesses showing...The women are heartbreaking, yet hilariously fun to be with...The dialogue is outrageous and brilliantly apropos to how we live now. they show different sides of feminity -- the girl who takes care of her mother, the journalist who gets the story, the actress who catches her husband with a lover, and that real estate maven who wants more than her 10 room penthouse. the restaurant spoof is a scream -- Vert where all the food is green.

If you read only one this summer, make it Beautiful Bodies. This is about the mind, soul and the body and about a beleagured city. These women are the real thing -- friends to the end, no matter what. They may fight, disagree but they have become more than friends. Sexier than Sex and the City, for really smart women who do not wish to be condescended to...Truly fine writing by a memoirist, writing her first novel. Funny, sad and true, true, true.

There should be a higher rating to express my utter rapture with this fantastic book. I never thought there would be an accurate novel to depict the real life stories of working women in their 30's, 40's This is so much more intelligent than Sex and the City, they are not on the same planet. These women make their way in the world, navigate through city life and have believable affairs with men. I loved the Postcoital divide...into which a man disappears after sex. Too funny, so true. I fell in love with the Native American man who sweeps the hostess off her feet, their love scene is truly beautiful. This is sex that is not embarassing to read, yet true and utterly evocative. My friends are all reading it and say the same thing. This is a gift!

A perfect summer book, one to savor and share. Six thirtysomething New York women gather for a baby shower (the mother is happily single) as the "storm of the century" gathers outside. Laura Shaine Cunningham's characters feel like old friends, but still have the freshness to make you laugh out loud. Beautiful Bodies is funny, funny, funny, but the six women's longings and disappointments as they hurtle towards forty give it a much deeper resonance. This is one you'll be recommending to friends for a long time to come.

All men should be required to read this book to understand what and how the women in their lives are thinking. Everyone should read it for the pleasure of it: for the great storytelling, and the kind of writing that makes you say, I could do that, until you realize how subtly textured and perfectly structured this book is and are grateful that you don't have to do it, that Cunningham's done it for you and done it beautifully.
She is, as is evident in all of her writing, a brilliant observer of human nature, and of women in particular. Each of the characters in Beautiful Bodies is fully fleshed, has strong opinions about the nature of that flesh, has desires, disappointments, triumphs, terrors, and articulates all these in a voice and idiom that's hers alone. They're great talkers, these women, with voices that are honest and familiar. I KNOW these women!
Don't be fooled by the light tone of the first pages. Cunningham has given us a very funny book, at times airy as a soufflé, yet these women are all grappling with the grittiest stuff life has to throw. And the overall effect - the taste in your mouth when the feast is over (Cunningham writes wonderfully about food; I wish she'd do a cookbook, it would be like standing in the kitchen with your best friend who happens to be a world class cook!) - is one of gratitude: Cunningham's women extend toward one another, after an often hilarious struggle, deep understanding and abiding compassion. It's a very rich book. I can't wait for her next one.

Lucky for me, I borrowed this from the library. how angry would I have been to have wasted money on this! What could have been an AMAZING story, falls flat, dead. ONE character out of the six MAIN characters has a MINIMAL resolution to her issues. The others have NONE. ZERO. One character--one of the more interesting characters in the book--has a big "secret" that we wait most of the book for her to reveal... and when she does... YAWN!

The character from Kentucky... pul-lease, did this woman do ANY research??? Be serious!

Martha, who by all standards, should have had some experience to teach her something valuable... no, she is unchanged.

Just a ridiculous waste of my time!