Just like Beauty
- Author Lisa Lerner
- Narrator Jorjeana Marie
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 1 January 2015
- Run Time 10 hours and 13 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Satirical fiction and parodies.
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What to expect
Just like Beauty is a brilliantly inventive debut novel that blends adolescent angst and cultural satire and is set in a disconcertingly not-so-distant future complete with high-tech food, mutant animals, socially sanctioned violence, and despoliation of the planet. This surprising combination gives author Lisa Lerner a fresh and funny way to explore family dynamics, gender roles, competitiveness, and the "beauty myth" in a society that keeps reinventing them anew for each generation.
A plague of mutant grasshoppers is invading American suburbia. An underground suicide cult is gaining national prominence. Gangs of teenage boys with blow torches run amok. But what really has fourteen-year-old Edie Stein distracted from her town's annual Feminine Woman of Conscience Pageant is Lana Grimaldi, the sexy girl next door. How does a feminine woman of conscience deal with her?
Just like Beauty offers a comically trenchant look at where our culture is heading and the absurdity that passes for ordinary.
Critics Review
“A gutsy and wildly imaginative first novel. It’s a freak
show but with human touches about the need for motherly approval and the
ecstasy of first love. Bottom line: beautiful debut.”
“Captivating…a work of striking lyricism and jittery energy…Lerner
writes in a prose style that is intricate, poetic, and full of surprises…In a
lesser writer’s hands, such an exaggerated view of womanhood might have seemed
silly or unbelievable. But Lerner has the gifts to make it all work—the girls
seem real, and you want them to escape.”
“Lerner is so adept at couching the grotesque within the
commonplace that the future seems just a few weeks away…Surprisingly witty and
tender.”
“Fiercely imagined…A bracing vision of how young women are
taught to strive for a synthetic femininity.”
“A quirky coming-of-age story set in an eerily recognizable
future…[Lerner] writes sentences that are surprising, inspired, and lyrical…reminiscent
of David Foster Wallace.”
“More comic relief than feminist manifesto…weird, wacky, and
worth it.”
“Wildly imaginative and, at times, hilarious…Poignantly real
and true.”
“A wicked twister of a first novel…critiques not just
society at large; it also focuses micro, exposing the failures to communicate
and connect that alienate husband from wife, parent from child…Lisa Lerner
merges Naomi Wolf, Tom Robbins, and Thomas Bellamy.”
“Dramatic…theatrical…the future [she] creates is so
frightening because it’s so easy to imagine; the casual, tacitly accepted
violence and environmental degradation feel grounded in a present-day reality.”
“Part comedy, part science fiction, part coming-of-age
drama, this novel rocks on what it means to be a girl, no matter who you are.”
“Surreal yet heartfelt, the novel probes what it means to be
a good daughter and conscientious citizen. Recommended for all libraries.”
“Inventive…Edie’s struggles to forge a unique identity lead her
to concoct a winning triumph all her own, and readers will be engaged by her
utterly believable pluck in this most unusual coming-of-age debut.”
“Funny and imaginative.”
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