Penguin Random House Canada, August 22, 2017.
Five Stars
Mia and Michael Slate and their son Finn are a
healthy, happy and prosperous family. They co-own a successful company, giving
Mia time to pursue her passion as a photographer, and they live in a beautiful
home in which they want for nothing. However, their perfect lives are shattered
one night when they receive an unexpected visit from their accountant – he interrupts
their cozy evening to tell them that their best friend and business partner has
been embezzling from them for years, leaving them financially destitute.
Mia, a former corporate banker, cannot believe that
Michael did not realize what was happening. She goes to bed angry, leaving her
husband to wait up for their teenage son Finn. Hours past curfew, Michael starts
to worry, and he heads out into their small town to search for his son.
Eventually, he tracks Finn to a party at his wealthy best friend’s property,
where he discovers Finn passed out in a snowbank after drinking too much. His
tragic mistake has devastating consequences that echo through the whole family.
Finn survives the night, but loses his hand to
frostbite, and everyone copes differently with the loss. Finn begins a clandestine
relationship with his former babysitter Jess, who happens to be dating Finn’s
best friend’s older brother. Mia and Michael lose the tenderness of their
decades long marriage – instead of communicating, they retreat into rough sex
and silence. Mia enters into a dangerous flirtation with a former colleague,
and Michael begins to spend his time at an abandoned baseball diamond, playing
catch with a scruffy street kid who replaces his damaged relationship with his
son.
The Slate family slowly unravels throughout the novel,
as they struggle with money and intimacy. All three characters take turns
narrating the story, as they all get closer to the edge of betrayal, revenge
and violence. The novel is written with honest and clear emotion, reaching deep
into the compassionate terrain of marriage, parenting and what it means to be a
family. The characters are solid and well-defined, populating a touching and
emotional world without becoming saccharine or melodramatic.
We All Love the
Beautiful Girls explores how the choices we make
can affect everyone around us, and how people show their true colours in the
face of tragedy. While I enjoyed the Canadian content of the novel (it’s set in
Quebec), its themes have global reach, especially regarding the normalization of
violence – specifically towards women – in our current socio-political climate.
I didn’t know much about this book when I started it, and I think that’s the
best way to read it – it started out slow, and therefore it was surprising yet
appropriate when the story became increasingly savage and raw. These characters
express real heartache, and with narrators that cross gender and age
boundaries, I think this novel could speak to a wide audience as we struggle
with how to connect to each other in the world we now live in.
I received this book from Penguin Random House Canada
and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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