“At the podium, my breath felt like pinpricks. I stunk at public speaking; I preferred to let the bones in my face do the talking. In the front row, alongside my aunts and my cousin Gavin, who’d scored weed at a Starbucks earlier and experienced the day like a volunteer for a local hypnotist, my mother emoted for the deaf and blind. I felt the back of my neck grow warm knowing that I could offer no relief, no diversion to the soggy, disconsolate faces before me.”
Malcolm Kwan begins his work as narrator for Kevin Chong’s Beauty Plus Pity at what is surely among the most stressful events in any person’s life; delivering the eulogy at his father’s funeral. As a literary device, a funeral is rife with possibilities, allowing for a glimpse into each personality through their reactions to anxiety-inducing stimuli. Chong works some miniature magic in the first chapter of his new work, skillfully outlining his major dramatis personae and setting up further conflicts with a minimum of fuss and an artful way with words. By the end of the first sixteen pages, Malcolm’s mother has been introduced, his relationships with his extended family have been outlined, his failure as a fiancé is apparent, and a sister he never knew he had walks into frame.
It’s a skillful opening, and in the following chapters, Chong doesn’t waste any of the good vibes he has created. Beauty Plus Pity is a little beauty of a novel: funny, wise, and subtly heartbreaking.
Malcolm has, in my experience as a reader, a career hitherto relatively unexplored in fiction; Malcolm is a male model. Or rather, he is trying to become one, a career path he finds surprisingly satisfying; “I saw myself as the opposite of the Amish, who believe that having your picture taken steals a part of your soul. Photos gave me a soul, or at least a complexity I didn’t necessarily possess; they infused my vacant expressions with ponderousness.” Giving such artistic leanings, Malcolm could easily come across as one-dimensional, or at least irredeemably narcissistic, but Beauty Plus Pity is not meant as a satire of the vacuous; leave that to Palahniuk and his wannabes. Beauty is about the acceptance of maturity, and Chong takes care to present Malcolm as a man facing choices he’s never had to consider before, someone still young enough to be utterly mystified by the unpredictability of life.
This unpredictability is embodied in Hadley, his sixteen-year-old half-sister, a product of his father’s one affair. Hadley and Malcolm’s burgeoning relationship forms the crux of the novel, and marks Malcolm’s slow ascent from young man with his head in the clouds to a man mature enough to confront the unexpected and make his peace with it. As Malcolm bounces back and forth between the youthful flightiness of Hadley, the engrained flakiness of his mother, and the conflicting dispositions of past and future girlfriends, he begins to discover his true nature, and reveals untapped reservoirs of levelheadedness to cope with his new responsibilities.
Chong’s central theme of revealing one’s true nature in response to societal and familial pressures is hardly new, but familiarity does not detract from Beauty’s many pleasures. There is a keen wit at play here, a discerning ear when it comes to dialogue, and an empathy for character that pushes the novel into unexpected heart-rending territory near its finale. There are one or two plot contrivances that push at the reality Chong creates (no spoilers here), but such forays are brief, smoothed over by a gentle prose style that suits the overall mood. There is also a welcome acerbic drollness; when Malcolm offers some relationship advice to his Uncle Charlie, Charlie shoots back with, “When someone your age does something, it’s stupid. When someone my age does the same thing, it comes from a fucking wellspring of prudence.”
Beauty Plus Pity, to make an absolutely unnecessary pun, is a beauty, with no pity. Kevin Chong may pave no new ground, but his understanding of humanity’s foibles is wonderful, and Malcolm’s trek to maturity is one I won’t soon forget.
POSTSCRIPT: I’d like to make an extra remark concerning one blurb on the back cover. Author Rawi Hage (De Niro’s Game), in his praise for Beauty Plus Pity, compares Chong to Woody Allen and Charles Bukowski, which is misleading; while their works may cover similar motifs, Chong’s narrative is never as bitingly cynical as Allen, and I don’t even begin to understand the Bukowski comparison. Bukowski bitterly probed the depths of the disenchanted and disenfranchised like few others; the analogy to Chong’s presentation, as fine as it is, is a false one.
Arsenal Pulp| 256 pages | $17.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1551524160
‘Beauty Plus Pity’ by Kevin Chong
Book Reviews
“At the podium, my breath felt like pinpricks. I stunk at public speaking; I preferred to let the bones in my face do the talking. In the front row, alongside my aunts and my cousin Gavin, who’d scored weed at a Starbucks earlier and experienced the day like a volunteer for a local hypnotist, my mother emoted for the deaf and blind. I felt the back of my neck grow warm knowing that I could offer no relief, no diversion to the soggy, disconsolate faces before me.”
Malcolm Kwan begins his work as narrator for Kevin Chong’s Beauty Plus Pity at what is surely among the most stressful events in any person’s life; delivering the eulogy at his father’s funeral. As a literary device, a funeral is rife with possibilities, allowing for a glimpse into each personality through their reactions to anxiety-inducing stimuli. Chong works some miniature magic in the first chapter of his new work, skillfully outlining his major dramatis personae and setting up further conflicts with a minimum of fuss and an artful way with words. By the end of the first sixteen pages, Malcolm’s mother has been introduced, his relationships with his extended family have been outlined, his failure as a fiancé is apparent, and a sister he never knew he had walks into frame.
It’s a skillful opening, and in the following chapters, Chong doesn’t waste any of the good vibes he has created. Beauty Plus Pity is a little beauty of a novel: funny, wise, and subtly heartbreaking.
Malcolm has, in my experience as a reader, a career hitherto relatively unexplored in fiction; Malcolm is a male model. Or rather, he is trying to become one, a career path he finds surprisingly satisfying; “I saw myself as the opposite of the Amish, who believe that having your picture taken steals a part of your soul. Photos gave me a soul, or at least a complexity I didn’t necessarily possess; they infused my vacant expressions with ponderousness.” Giving such artistic leanings, Malcolm could easily come across as one-dimensional, or at least irredeemably narcissistic, but Beauty Plus Pity is not meant as a satire of the vacuous; leave that to Palahniuk and his wannabes. Beauty is about the acceptance of maturity, and Chong takes care to present Malcolm as a man facing choices he’s never had to consider before, someone still young enough to be utterly mystified by the unpredictability of life.
This unpredictability is embodied in Hadley, his sixteen-year-old half-sister, a product of his father’s one affair. Hadley and Malcolm’s burgeoning relationship forms the crux of the novel, and marks Malcolm’s slow ascent from young man with his head in the clouds to a man mature enough to confront the unexpected and make his peace with it. As Malcolm bounces back and forth between the youthful flightiness of Hadley, the engrained flakiness of his mother, and the conflicting dispositions of past and future girlfriends, he begins to discover his true nature, and reveals untapped reservoirs of levelheadedness to cope with his new responsibilities.
Chong’s central theme of revealing one’s true nature in response to societal and familial pressures is hardly new, but familiarity does not detract from Beauty’s many pleasures. There is a keen wit at play here, a discerning ear when it comes to dialogue, and an empathy for character that pushes the novel into unexpected heart-rending territory near its finale. There are one or two plot contrivances that push at the reality Chong creates (no spoilers here), but such forays are brief, smoothed over by a gentle prose style that suits the overall mood. There is also a welcome acerbic drollness; when Malcolm offers some relationship advice to his Uncle Charlie, Charlie shoots back with, “When someone your age does something, it’s stupid. When someone my age does the same thing, it comes from a fucking wellspring of prudence.”
Beauty Plus Pity, to make an absolutely unnecessary pun, is a beauty, with no pity. Kevin Chong may pave no new ground, but his understanding of humanity’s foibles is wonderful, and Malcolm’s trek to maturity is one I won’t soon forget.
POSTSCRIPT: I’d like to make an extra remark concerning one blurb on the back cover. Author Rawi Hage (De Niro’s Game), in his praise for Beauty Plus Pity, compares Chong to Woody Allen and Charles Bukowski, which is misleading; while their works may cover similar motifs, Chong’s narrative is never as bitingly cynical as Allen, and I don’t even begin to understand the Bukowski comparison. Bukowski bitterly probed the depths of the disenchanted and disenfranchised like few others; the analogy to Chong’s presentation, as fine as it is, is a false one.
Arsenal Pulp| 256 pages | $17.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1551524160