Review: The Beauty

The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Um.

I don't even know how to rate this.

This is just one fkn WEIRD book okay.

Also it's two stories so that was completely unexpected.

The Beauty

The actual, titular story, which I thought was the entire novel. Super weird. Basically there's no women left because they all died from some nasty womb disease so there's just this little band of lonely men. I thought this was going to be a thought-provoking, feminist-type horror story about how hopeless men are without women but instead we get mushroom women with insatiable sexual appetites. I don't even know how to unravel all the hidden meanings in this. Straight up not smart enough for this horrific little story. I mean, I didn't hate it, but I also absolutely DID NOT GET IT.

Peace, Pipe

Actually probably preferred this story, even if it's entirely not what I signed up for. This time we've got some random in a cell who messed up an alien interaction on another planet and is now in quarantine thinking about his/her mistakes. Huh. I'm just now realising I assumed the entire time that the narrator was female but I don't recall anything indicating that. Just projecting my own gender I suppose! Anyway, this is quite an insightful commentary on language and all its nuances which I found completely fascinating. Definitely got the old wheels turning upstairs.

But then there's also that totally weird element of our protagonist talking to a pipe that might be an alien life form but might also be imagination/delirium taking liberties with noisy plumbing.

Both stories have a super-weird surface with lots of unfathomable depths of hidden meaning. It's all very confusing and if you're super smart when it comes to subtext you'll likely rate this one pretty high. Me, I'm way too dull to unravel this mess.

Weird, creepy and thought-provoking, but ultimately went waaaaaaaaaay over my head.

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