I was really looking forward to this book and it seemed like it would be right up my alley. Mushrooms growing from where women's bodies are buried in a post-apocalyptic setting. Sounds creepy, but I felt like the story ended very abruptly. As well, none of the male characters really stood out to me and I didn't feel invested in them (or care when bad things happened to them). The Beauty were the only things I really found interesting in this book. I was pretty disappointed overall. I'm only giving it two stars because there were a couple moments that I found scary/engaging and the cover art is lovely. ( )

What is beautiful? Repulsive? Are you attracted to it? Are you beautiful, or unloved? These question resonate as one reads "The Beauty."

Aliya Whiteley's THE BEAUTY offers a compact dose of weird fiction, body horror specifically, in which humanity is evolving into mushrooms. Expect a mashup of William Golding 1954 Lord of the Flies and P. D. James' 1992 novel The Children of Men: a cluster of men survive in a dystopian future where all the women are dead (no hope for reproduction). The Beauty is saturated with philosophy on "what is beautiful?" and "what is humanity?".

Bob Milne's Beauty in Ruins Book Reviews led me to this wonderful story. This edition has two parts, the first half is the titular story, and the other half is a bonus shorty story called "Peace, Pipe."

Some may think 100 pages is too short, but for a weird fiction shorter is often better. Each sentence of "The Beauty" is packed with meaning. Don't expect any fluffy filler. This style is not suited for mega-tome page epic-fiction! Instead, it begs to be read aloud, like a poem... as the protagonist would tell a story. The best way to communicate the style is with Excerpts (see below). No worries, I left out any mushroom/human romance.

Don't let the intellectual narrative fool you, there is plenty of action. Each section ramps up the tension dramatically as Nate and the other men are confronted with fungal manifestations of women, and they struggle with repulsion and attraction. With the future of humanity on the line, and the desire to reproduce, there is much at stake. Jealously and murder ensue. Incidentally, my son and I are playing Dark Souls 1 (remastered) and Dark Souls 3, and the vision of the Parent/Child Mushrooms from Darktoot Garden and Ash Lake were evoked. Imagine if you were encouraged to start a family with those!

In summary, The Beauty offered everything I expected and desired: a mysterious adventure, evocative prose, and unique storytelling. It is deep, but thrilling.

PEACE, PIPE, is a bonus story that is 50% of this book. An alien diplomat chronicles its exploits (having accidentally started a war on Demeter) while quarantined and communicating to a pipe (which speaks as water flows through it, and evokes the sounds of a flushing toilet). Again, the themes of storytelling and communication are foundations, as well as an invitation to the reader to change perspectives on different cultures. No body horror in this one.

Excerpts from "The Beauty":
"There are signs, I don't care what William says. There are signs of change, of regeneration, and I saw the first mushrooms in the graveyard on the morning after U ripped up the photograph of my mother's face and threw the pieces over the cliff, into the fat swallowing folds of the sea..."

My name is Nathan, just twenty-three and given to the curation of stories.I listen, retain, then polish and release them over the fire at night, when the others hush and lean forward in their desire to hear of the past. They crave romance, particularly when autumn sets in and cold nights await them, and so I speak of Alice, and Bethany, and Sarah, and Val, and other dead women who all once had lustrous hair and never a bad word on their plump limps...Language is changing, like the earth, like the sea. We live in a lonely, fateful flux, outnumbered and outgrown."

"When [William] told me of his journey, that was how he finished it--he fitted there. I find this to the strangest of expressions--how does one fit in with other people, all edges erased, making a seamless life from the sharp corners of discontent? I don't find anything that fits in such a way. Certainly not in nature. Nothing real is meant to tessellate like a triangle, top-bottom bottom-top. The sheep will never munch the grass in straight lines."

"[Doctor Ben] told me diseases were like people. They fight and fight and throw themselves around to escape the walls of tighter and tighter boxes."

"They were found in the graveyard, springing from the decaying bodies of the women deep in the ground, and they were found in the woods, spreading themselves like a rug over the wet earth. The Beauty were small at first but they grew and took the best qualities of the dead. They sucked up through the soil all the softness, serenity, hope, and happiness of womankind. They made themselves into a new form, a new north, shaped from the clay of the world and designed only to bring pleasure to man.

But the Beauty knew form the many experiences of the women that had gone before, that men did not always love what was good for them. Men could attack, hurt, main and murder the things that came too fast, too suddenly, like love...." ( )

Somewhere away from the cities and towns, a group of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their stories in the Valley of the Rocks. For when the women are all gone the rest of your life is all there is for everyone. The men are waiting to pass into the night.

The story shall be told to preserve the past. History has gone back to its aural roots and the power of words is strong. Meet Nate, the storyteller, and the new secrets he brings back from the woods. William rules the group with youth and strength, but how long can that last? And what about Uncle Ted, who spends so much time out in the woods?

Hear the tales, watch a myth be formed. For what can man hope to achieve in a world without women? When the past is only grief how long should you hold on to it? What secrets can the forest offer to change it all?

Out January 16, 2018

MY THOUGHTS:

I was provided this book in exchange for my honest review.

Bizarre, speculative fiction, weird, creepy, horrifying, insane, disturbing, sick, terrifying, provocative, gross, hideous, monsters, creep factor, fascinating, brilliant, innovative, strange and enthralling, creative, astounding, unpredictable, thought provoking, fantastically conceived, surreal, complex and twisted, descriptive and perfect, original and dark, outlandish, haunting, emotional rollercoaster, inferences, gender questions, equality issues, gender role swapping, sexually disturbing, sad realism...
A bizarre book deserves a bizarre review. ( )

So good!!! This edition contains two novellas - "The Beauty" and "Peace, Pipe" - both of which are nearly perfect. Why not 5 stars then? Because I wanted MORE!!!

In gender-bending "The Beauty," we're asked to contemplate, what is woman and her many roles (lover, wife, mother, sister, teacher, storyteller)? It's not the first story to suggest that in the absence of cisgender women, their male counterparts would adapt, both emotionally and physically. But it's the first story I've read that felt true - deeply, painfully human... in a world with creepy mushroom people.

"Peace, Pipe" explores the power of words and language as a tool to bridge gaps or wage wars.

4.5 stars
(And I will read whatever Aliya Whiteley publishes next.)

"If they were at war with their emotions, thinking was the best weapon they possessed."

"But what is more universal than time? Every creature marks it, in one way or another. I've yet to find one who doesn't age."

"The higher up you go, the less you need to express regret. Instead you simply rewrite to suit."

"They pillaged each language and concept that appealed. A large language, containing over one million words, will hold so many corpses within it. In the process of ingestion many original meanings will be lost, and new ones will be born."

"In a world of so many beings, these descriptions only serve the purpose of telling others how I fit amongst them. How I can be separated, and picked out from the crowd. They matter only when I'm amongst others who are so similar in form and function that we are all desperate to find the delineations." ( )