The Story of Beautiful Girl

The Story of Beautiful Girl
By Rachel Simon (368 pages)
Published by Grand Central Publishing
Bookish rating: 2.75

Eh. Perhpas my relatively low rating for this book (2.75) is due to the fact that I expected it to be so much better than it was. The novel never really delivered for me, or for most of my Reader's Ink book club folk.

The set-up is relatively decent: Lynnie, a woman who had been raped and impregnated and who, it appears, has some sort of developmental disorder, and Homan, a deaf man, escape an mental institution in the 1960s. Lynnie delivers her baby, and they show up at a retired teacher's (Martha's) house in the middle of the night. The story starts at Martha's.

The authorities catch Lynnie, but not before she begs Martha to "hide her," that is, baby. Homan escapes.

See? Decent set-up, right? Well, the book then meanders aimlessly for the next--literally--40 odd years. Why Simon focuses so heavily on particular events but not others, often jumping ahead a dozen years or killing off someone major--death mentioned merely in passing--gave the novel a jerky, uneven quality. Heavy use of flashbacks didn't help.

The character of Lynnie is the strongest, as Simon effectively captures her complexity while also making her mental disability present without taking over her character. However, as a mama, I did not buy that Lynnie spent the next couple of decades pining for Homan rather than the daughter she was forced to part with. Perhaps Simon intended to attribute the "oh well, lost my baby" to her disability, but if Lynnie can love Homan so deeply, obviously she's capable of great love. Why wouldn't she be torn up over never seeing her child again? Finally, Lynnie and especially Homan are portrayed as almost condescendingly heroic, flawless, and, of course, victimized--like it wouldn't have been politically correct for them to have had imperfections.

The ending was contrived and anticlimactic, which was disappointing after slogging through 368 pages of wandering Homan, pining Lynnie, and selfless Martha taking the baby from location to location.

Not really recommended.