Waking Beauty: A Novel [Paperback]

Elyse Friedman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2004

What would you do if you went to bed ugly, fat, and depressed and woke up the next morning in the body of a goddess?
This is exactly the miracle that befalls Allison Penny, who has spent most of her twenty-two years on this earth in a serious slump (to say the least).

Having long since given up on her life, Allison is stuck in an apartment with an evil sexpot roommate, trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic mother, and miserably working as a cleaning lady to pay the bills. Now, of course, Allison wastes no time in test-driving her new looks, and she experiences all of the power and fun that come with being gorgeous. Men and modeling agencies are falling all over her, and she finally has the con?dence to live her life without trying to disappear into the background. But even for the beautiful people, things can get complicated, and soon Allison finds herself with a whole new set of problems.

Darkly hilarious, engaging, and full of surprises, Waking Beauty is a modern-day fairy tale with an all-too-real moral: No matter how much we hate to admit it, it’s what’s on the outside that counts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Friedman (Then Again) offers up a spunky, spiteful revenge novel about Allison Penny, an ugly 20-something who suddenly wakes up gorgeous—a silly conceit counterbalanced by bulls-eye social commentary and sharply drawn characters. Allison's roommate, Virginie, and her boyfriend, Fraser, have long made Allison's life hell; pretty much everybody is inconsiderate of pretransformation Allison, including her own adoptive mother. Her only friend is Nathan, a video store clerk and aspiring film critic. Early chapters catalogue the injustices of a world in which unattractive people can't get ahead, while later chapters satisfyingly knock down the pins lined up earlier: Allison gets revenge on Virginie, Fraser, her mother and a supporting cast of shop girls, literati and other pretentious types. But she hasn't become beautiful just to get revenge, has she? "Did I have some sort of beauty duty to perform? And if so, what would it be? Posing naked for a PETA billboard? Administering blowjobs to ugly outcasts?" No, but there's a lesson here: "it's what's on the outside that counts." Beautiful Allison gets handsome suitors, job offers—even her mother's affection. But she's kept her sharp, sardonic view of all things superficial, and she still loves homely Nathan. Friedman thumbs her nose at many of the conventions of chick lit, and the nasty bite of her prose offers plenty of guilty pleasure.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Allison Penny, a self-described "troll," is an overweight, unattractive, depressed 22-year-old with a dead-end cleaning job; a disparaging, alcoholic mother; a father who won't acknowledge her; and a roommate who is just plain mean. Her life is on the fast track to nowhere, until one morning, with no explanation, Allison wakes up stunningly beautiful. What's a girl to do but take her new body for a test drive before her luck runs out? It is in this new body that Allison experiences everything she had been missing. In the end she has to learn how to live in the new body and all the problems that come with it, including getting her inner beauty to match her outer beauty. This modern twist on an old fairy tale is funny, sometimes dark, and completely engaging, but the moral is a little pessimistic--it's what's on the outside that counts. But the book's only real flaw lies in a couple of sexual passages that are raw and somewhat out of tone with the rest of the book. Carolyn Kubisz
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (June 22, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400051061
• ISBN-13: 978-1400051069
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,043,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love it or hate it, it will get you thinking., August 5, 2004

By 

curvynovelsdotinfo "[e-mail]" (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waking Beauty: A Novel (Paperback)

Heroine: Stout, then willowy

At the ripe old age of 22, Allison Penny is already sick of life. Her alcoholic mother berates her at every possible chance. The young woman is barely making it as a cleaning lady. And she is rooming with a sex fiend who only serves to remind Allison that her own love life has always and will always be in the toilet because, in a word, Allison Penny is ugly. Well, two words. Not just ugly, but fat.

But all that changes one morning when Allison miraculously awakens to find herself in a new body, one that transcends the supermodel class. Yet after all those years of being certain that a new appearance would be the answer to the pain in her heart, Allison-the-beauty discovers that perfection personified isn't necessarily all that it's cracked up to be.

What worked for me:

This was a very funny book that took a tongue-in-cheek look at the realities of what a person's appearance means in the world--especially a woman's. The choice of characters and settings were excellent, even if they weren't always fully developed. They really helped the reader to delve into the subject of a caste system based upon personal beauty or lack thereof.

I felt that the author made it easy to relate to Allison, both before and after her "miracle". I fully understood the need for Allison-the-ugly to run away into fantasyland and daydream the way she did. And I have to admit there was a certain pleasure to riding along with Allison-the-beauty during her payback times, but the vendettas I enjoyed most weren't a direct result of her new attractiveness.

The ly adverbs that popped up here and there kept catching my eye, but other than that I really enjoyed the writing style in this book. Some of the visuals that the author painted were just wonderful.

Size-wise, prior to turning into a living Barbie doll, Allison was squat, flat, and flabby with unattractive features all the way around. But not only females suffered from beauty discrimination in this novel. Allison's guy pal Nathan was overlooked many times because he was merely average in appearance.

What didn't work for me:    

There were times when reading this book left me feeling downright depressed, but I don't want to give anything away so I can't tell you why.

I would have liked to have had some concrete idea of why and how this change occurred in Allison.

Overall:

       A great book for the bubble bath or beach, but there is plenty of deeper thinking here about the nuances of the human psyche that would make it a terrific subject for a women's studies discussion group.

Warning: there are some coarse words and some sexual scenarios, as well as weight loss, in this book.

If you liked "Waking Beauty" you might also enjoy "Jemima J.", "Fat Chance", "Separation Anxiety", "The Way It Is", "Inappropriate Men", "Coffee and Kung Fu", "What a Girl Wants", "Getting Over It", "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Good in Bed", "Last Chance Saloon", and "Having It and Eating It".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, July 19, 2004

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Waking Beauty: A Novel (Paperback)

This is the story about an overweight, exceptionally homely woman who wakes up one morning with the body and face of a supermodel.

The story doesn't try to explain how this happened, and for me this wasn't a problem. Once you accept the premise, I felt the author did have some interesting things to say about Beauty, and how powerful a force it is in our culture.

I give this book 4 stars because I thought it was a quick, fun, entertaining read. It's not simply a Revenge book, although it's that. It's also a mirror on how our society works.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A modern fairy tale, July 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Waking Beauty: A Novel (Paperback)

Instead of a rags-to-riches Cinderella story in which a poor girl becomes a princess, Elyse Friedman gives us a beast-to-beauty story in which the altogether uncomely 22-year-old Allison Penny wakes up one morning to find she is suddenly beautiful - and instantly a whole new world of fortune, fame, and love is available to her. The story is complete with a wicked "stepmother" in her adoptive mother and "stepsister" in her roommate. As in some other stories with a similar premise, Allison's first reaction to her astonishing transformation is to take revenge against those who denied her love and friendship because of her previously unlovely appearance. But beyond that, does Allison eventually decide that it's what's inside that counts? What I like about this book is that it doesn't "grow" the character in that obvious direction. Elyse Friedman isn't trying to kid us that what's outside doesn't count...a lot. Allison learns something else. You may be more likely to enjoy this book if you consider yourself one of the beauty-challenged.