Title: Natural BeautyAuthor: Ling Ling Huang
First Published: April 4, 2023
Publisher: Dutton
Pages: 272
Genre: Horror, LGBTQ, Satire
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Rating:
Synopsis:
Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.
Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.
A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.
Get the Book: AmazonReview
Natural Beauty blew me away, it was an unexpected favorite. Following a first generation Chinese American prodigy who, after the death of her parents begins working for a high end beauty company. The narration swings like a pendulum between the unnamed narrator’s past and present as she finds herself ensnared in something far more sinister than she could’ve imagined. The plot felt like fever dream, it is bizarre and uncomfortable and surreal. It was also pretty emotional and it made me cry a few times.
The book explores themes of the immigrant experience and cultural identity, poverty and classism, female bodily autonomy, the racism present in the beauty industry, and the way that America’s consumer culture exploits the bodies of women, particularly women of color. As a mixed race Asian woman raised in America by my immigrant mother and grandmother in the 90s, the book’s sharp commentary about cultural erasure was poignant. I was reminded of a conversation I had with my mother, who had told me she had deep regrets about not raising my siblings and I to be bilingual, and how she had been advised not to do this so that we could have an easier time assimilating to American culture. Perhaps they were right, but I wonder about the cost.
Natural Beauty is an impressive debut and sets itself apart from other beauty horror stories. I found it compulsively readable and the ending had my jaw on the floor. Ling Ling Huang deserves her flowers, bravo.
Quote
“The only thing that had given me any measure of comfort when they had their accident was the idea of inheritance. Their DNA unfolding quietly in my body. A gesture here, a habitual tic there. A part of me was always waiting for them. For my templates to silver like my mother’s, stars shooting through midnight hair. For my body to gather in the swells of soft skin I clutched as a child. I hoped I would laugh one day, and it would be an echo of my father’s joy.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Ling Ling Huang
Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles including the Music Kitchen, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, Urban Playground Chamber Orchestra, Shattered Glass, and Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy award in 2020. Natural Beauty is her first novel.
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