The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

November 17, 2014
Filipacchi’s fourth novel blithely upends the social constructs of beauty, desire, and art in her signature brisk, darkly comic style. As usual, Filipacchi taps the sleaze at its source: Manhattan. The focus is on a successful costumer designer named Barb and her group of artsy friends, the Knights of Creation: Georgia, a bestselling novelist; Lily, a talented pianist; beautiful socialite and would-be potter Penelope, who was once kidnapped; and Penelope’s rescuer, ex-cop Jack. The fractured fairy tale of a plot turns on narrator Barb, who inherited her supermodel mother’s jaw-dropping looks but has dressed in an elaborate disguise since she learned that her beauty drove her friend Gabriel to suicide, and Lily, whose face is “simply extremely ugly—the kind of ugliness that is inoperable,” and who yearns to write a piece of music that will hypnotize her longtime crush, a bro-ish violinist named Strad. Filipacchi (Love Creeps) succeeds by loading this frothy plot with sharp surreal turns and layers of subversive meaning as Georgia’s lost laptop mysteriously reappears, Lily’s melodious powers of persuasion become supernaturally effective, and Gabriel warns in a postmortem letter to Barb that one of the Knights intends to kill Strad. The author’s own mother, model Sondra Peterson, even makes a cameo, but while looks can kill, they’re no match for Filipacchi’s rapier wit.

March 1, 2015

Filipacchi's (Love Creeps) absurdist fourth novel requires a reader who is willing to suspend disbelief, so let's accept the ridiculous premise and dive in. Barb the beautiful lives in a fat suit and wears the most inappropriate clothes and a ratty gray wig because she must protect the world from her loveliness. Ugliness is a mask she regularly discards in bars to prove that men are obsessed with beauty. Lily, the truly ugly one, is obsessed with Strad, who isn't afraid to say he can only love beautiful women. Lily will do anything to get Strad to love her and, with Barb's help, she succeeds. Lily, a pianist, composes a song that makes her beautiful--but only while it's playing. Barb designs a mask for Lily, which, in combination with the beauty song, is used to seduce Strad. And it works until Lily decides she can't hide behind the mask any longer. There is also a murder plot, magic realism, and a love story for Barb. VERDICT While some of Filipacchi's gags stray into eye-rolling territory and her message about the role of beauty in our culture manages to be both heavy-handed and superficial, the novel has its moments. The successful reader will embrace the over-the-top set pieces and roll with it.--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD

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