Book Review: Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

Our obliquely named protagonist’s life has been shaped by growing up poor in New Jersey, the daughter of two pianists who barely escaped China’s cultural revolution with their lives and fled for the relative safety of the United States as soon as they could. Unfamiliar with the English language, they eventually found work as piano teachers, but did their best to dissuade their daughter from taking up the instrument as well. It didn’t work, for more reasons than one:

Ma would shake her head shyly when Ba played the songs that had been popular when he and Ma were growing up. Songs that depicted the country people often told me to return to, but that I had never seen. Ma always sang along softly and I would try to follow, but my tongue snarled on the difficult syllables. My parents never looked as happy and as sad as when they were singing the songs from their youth. I often wondered in these moments what it cost them to never show fragility. Only determination and resilience in the face of their new country.

Drawn both to the instrument and to the meaning it clearly has in her parents’ lives, our protagonist develops a unique style that soon has her qualifying for a generous scholarship to the Conservatory. She discovers quickly, however, that being young and talented has its drawbacks. She makes few friends, and suffers guilt over being unable to keep back more money for her impoverished parents. Things come to a head after a performance that is meant to be a triumph for her turns into a night of tragedy.

Fast-forward several years, and she’s working in a greasy fry shop in the city while living in the prohibitively expensive and awful basement of acquaintances. When Saje Bernnson steps into her workplace one day and offers her a job, it’s as if her fairy godmother has finally arrived.

Saje is the owner of Holistik, a super-premium beauty and wellness company whose bleeding edge technology has enraptured not only its high-end clientele, but also the imaginations and aspirations of millions worldwide. Working as a salesgirl at their flagship boutique opens up a whole new world to our protagonist, who is given all the products and supplements she needs to fit in with the image of unattainable beauty the brand wishes to project. It can seem frivolous and vain, but as she gets closer to Helen, a relative of one of Holistik’s founders and perhaps her first real friend, she allows herself to be vulnerable enough to explain why she thinks her work is more than just surface-level:

“A lot of the clients are very rich, that’s true but many of them are young women. They don’t necessarily have much money, but they spend what they can spare on bettering themselves. Maybe what we’re doing is manipulative, but maybe it’s important, too. I can’t see where the difference begins or ends. Beauty has always been one of the only ways women have been able to access power, and I can’t fault any of them for wanting more of it.”

 

Truthfully, I relate to the young women more than I want to admit and feel a bit defensive about Holistik, the first place that has afforded me real and social currency.

Unfortunately, things start taking a turn for the weird and deadly, as our protagonist finds herself enmeshed in a living nightmare. Micro-aggressions she can handle, especially if she’s being paid good money to deal with customers who don’t even realize when they’re being extremely rude. But when she realizes the lifestyle and products she’s embracing are changing her into someone she can barely recognize, she has to ask herself hard questions about the value of her own identity and what costs she’s willing to pay for not only survival but for the power of appearances.

This is a smart, savage book about the horrors of the modern beauty and wellness industry, and how capitalism can twist anything to look like a good idea. Written by a musician with immigrant parents, the novel’s visceral depiction of growing up poor and musical feels absolutely lived in, as does the examination of what our protagonist needs to do to survive living in the big city. I did feel like I wanted more out of the book’s climax, but I was definitely impressed with Ling Ling Huang’s narrative choices in the aftermath, which hold up a brutally honest mirror to how image works in our society.

Natural Beauty is a terrific metaphor for how selfishness and greed drive criminal conspiracies by preying on the fears of the financially and psychologically insecure, while also sensitively exploring what it means to be part of a minority group trying to fit in with the mainstream. It’s not for the faint of heart—the bit with the papaya seeds freaked me out—but it’s a compelling, darkly satirical novel of crime and horror that often feels disturbingly close to reality.