Customer Reviews

Little Beauties: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Kim Addonizio proves that she's not just a great poet, but also a stunning storyteller in this tale of two women and their challenges and their mothers. I could have lived without the baby's voice chapters, which seem way too precious, but the on target descriptions of a woman living with obsessive compulsive disorder and her "rules" are completely fascinating.

Kim Addonizio pulls off one of the harder tricks a novelist can attempt -- namely, finding the magic in flawed and ordinary lives. Although her subject matter is quite different from Alice Sebold's in The Lovely Bones, I found this book similar in spirit, and just as satisfying.

It's funny to read some of the reviews of this novel. People seem so afraid and judgemental of the baby voice, but to me it is what ties the novel together. It is NOTHING like "Look Who's Talking." Instead of taking the easy shallow route with the baby, Addonizio looks deeper. The baby does not read as a device, but rather as a fully developed character with wants and needs. Stella is the hub of the book, bringing these unusual characters together. Addonizio also nails the pregnant teenager with an honesty that rings true to any woman who went through adolescence in the last 25 years. Diana, the woman with OCD, is a fascinating character explored with dark humor and compassion. Little Beauties was a delight to read and for a poet known for her dark cutting honest poetry, her novel is a fresh lively funny book proving Addonizio can write on both ends of the spectrum.

And I would like to add, as a woman, that I resent the "lifetime" comment. Just because something deals with women's issues does not make it cheesey.

Interesting...
This was a story that kept my interest. I enjoyed learning about 'the rules' of someone with OCD. I can't imagine trying to live with this disease. Diane, trying to overcome one rule at a time. Jamie, pregnant and not wanting a child has her own trouble. She has her own family and baby on the way troubles. Then theres Stella, the unborn-then born baby. She knows shes coming into a world where she's not wanted. All of these lives intertwine in the story that each of them end up needing each other. I enjoyed this story but didn't find that I felt fulfilled with it. I can't say I'd recommend this but it wasn't a bad book. Out of all the books out there in the world I'd of recommended somthing else.

I read this whole book on the way to England on the plane. It was a perfect story for that sort of length. Easy, fun reading. A story of three and 1/2 women (you'll have to read it to find the "1/2"!), Little Beauties tells a tale drawing on four stages of life. The OCD that's interwoven throughout the book rings very true and the details are fascinating. Every character is given a voice and even if the story doesn't end in a tidy knot, it's satisfying. One reason I gave it 4 out of 5 stars is that it felt too short. The story could have been longer. I wanted to know more about each woman's fate. I did love the cover art; the bars of soap with bubbles against the robin's egg blue is really striking.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is true that the character Anthony, and the final scene, are somewhat cliched. But everything else about the book is not only imaginative but also rings true, and in that way reminded me of some of Anne Tyler's early books. My favorite character is Stella, whose thoughts we know before and after her birth.

This was a quick read and kind of cute. But this book is not going to go down in history as one of the greatest novels of all time - or of 2005. The story of the OCD former beauty queen and the often shallow pregnant teen is handled well enough. I would recommend this book for readers who want a quick escape. However, like the characters in the book who are overly concerned with their visual appearance; I've come away feeling that this novel itself is too shallow but attempting to have depth.

Regardless, this could definitely be movie material - as another reviewer suggested, a Lifetime movie or even a good, independent film. But a great book does not always make a great movie; and a great movie is not always based on good books. This book is simply not great.

This book was a page turner and really entertaining. I found myself getting wrapped up in what it must be like to "wash" (obsessively clean). I only give this book three stars, however, because it falls way short and just ends. I felt like the author played a big joke on me by just ending the book when I felt like it literally was only halfway through. There was no real conclusion to the story. What happens to each of the characters? I believe the author really didn't know how to end her story so she just ended it way too soon.

I picked up Little Beauties hoping for a good novel to escape into. I was immediately pulling into this remarkable story, and found it provided that moment of escapist reading where I enter into the world of the book, yet surprisingly was rich with insight that literally changed my perspective and understanding of my own life.

It was one of those few books that I felt was MEANT for me to stumble across. I wasn't looking to read anything about OCD and when I picked it up had only heard of the author so did so based on her notoriety as a poet. That subject matter was a huge surprise-and RELIEF for me.

It just spoke to me so personally in a way that reading dry clinical literature on OCD can't. Not only was it a literary brilliant move to structure the title of each chapter as one of the items on the OCD list, that made the book FUN and CLEVER while informative but not didactic. What a fabulous story which just pulls the reader in. After a while you realize you are learning about this rarity of OCD which for most people isn't something they may ever really have to think about (THANKFULLY!) But for those of us who have ever had relationships with those who just can't use a soap bar if touched by another, or have to wash with nine washclothes (one for each part of the body), or flip out if you bring a libraby book to bed because of the germs-- Well this book is nothing more than the AH HA! Moment of FINALLY UNDERSTANDING the torture of those who suffer this disorder, and the stress it places on not only themselves but those around them.
My copy was passed on to a friend who is a counselor as I think it is a MUST READ for anyone working in a clinical field whom may ever have to help someone deal with the challenges of OCD. When I finished it I was tempted to write a THANK YOU LETTER to the author as I was so touched by this book.

Kim Addonizio's Little Beauties is a wonder of a novel. Told in alternative viewpoints, she contrasts a woman with severe OCD, an about-to-be teen mom, and a fetus, later a teen mom and a newborn baby. This premise alone drew me to the book, but what kept me reading was how compassionately, rather than neurotically, Addonizio painted her characters. Watching Diana struggle with losing control over her rigid OCD rules and trying to welcome people into her life post-breakup, and seeing from the outside how sad a life she had created for herself, was tempered by the hopefulness of Stella, and Jasmine's youth. All of this is contrasted with the world of beauty pageants Diana has left behind as well as the ethereal place Stella occupies. It's her insights that truly make this book shine, for Stella has access to everyone, even dead people, and can see far beyond people's surfaces. Pitting a baby with all her inherent messiness, not to mention Jasmine's internal messiness, with Diana's fastidiousness, creates an uneasy tension between them, and watching Diana be forced to open up to them, and to the possibility of a relationship after the demise of her last one, is like watching a sullen teenager slowly grow up and realize the world is not all about them. Diana's emotional growth has been stunted, by fear and OCD, and watching her teeter on the verge of getting better and sinking into the familiarity of her rules was riveting.

The contrast between what the mothers in the book want for their daughters?Gloria wants to have a beauty pageant winner, Maria wants to have a "good girl," and Jasmine doesn't even really want to be a mom?is splendidly done, and instead of making the reader feel sorry for any of the protagonists, who are all trapped in certain unsavory situations, Addonizio shows them each struggling and coping the best they can as they adapt, adjust, and grow up. By the end, I certainly hoped that Stella could use all the additional knowledge she's gained from being privy to the Before to help herself avoid the pitfalls the other women had gone through, even though surely some of them are inevitable.

Stella was by far my favorite character, perhaps because she was the most helpless. Diana and Jasmine often made me want to shake them out of their stupors, pull them back into the real world, or at least one more real than the fantasies, of rules and freedom, they've each created in their heads. Yet Addonizio, thankfully, doesn't judge them, letting each character find her own path to "beauty" and love, of self and others. She made me care and wonder about the characters long after I'd closed the book, wanting to know how they've turned out, and if they've fulfilled the potential Addonizio's imbued them with so beautifully. This was a risky, unusual novel, especially with a fetus/newborn as a storyteller, and Addonizio more than rises to the challenge.

The idea that this is a "Lifetime channel" type of book simply because it's about women struggling rings false. Addonizio humanizes OCD and teen motherhood without preaching or making this a morality tale.