Unfortunate Importance of Beauty (Filipacchi) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Funny, surreal, absurd and charmingly preposterous.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times Book Review


The funniest novelist you’ve never heard of.... Few comic novelists get characters talking so naturally, and amusingly.
John Freeman - Boston Globe


Readers who’d like to spend a little time at the corner where a brisker Haruki Murakami meets a drier ‘30 Rock’ would do well to seek out Filipacchi’s radiantly intelligent and very funny novel.
Ellis Avery - San Francisco Chronicle


Filipacchi's lively story reflects on the unearned power that beauty confers on its recipients...breezy with a bite.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR


Magic spills from the pores of Filipacchi’s story.... The resulting romp is a witty and honest rendering of the unknowable distance between perception and reality, exploring the possibility that beauty is literally in the eyes of the beholder.
Alexandra Coakley - Slate


A surreal and utterly compelling triumph.
Buzzfeed


[A] zanily satirical, spot-on novel.
Leigh Haber - Oprah Magazine


Takes a fairy tale, flips it on its head, and adds an element of murder . . . will both make you laugh and keep you on the edge of your seat.
Lynsey Eidell - Glamour


Filipacchi’s fourth novel blithely upends the social constructs of beauty, desire, and art in her signature brisk, darkly comic style.... Filipacchi succeeds by loading this frothy plot with sharp surreal turns and layers of subversive meaning.... [W]hile looks can kill, they’re no match for Filipacchi’s rapier wit.
Publishers Weekly


Filipacchi's absurdist fourth novel requires a reader who is willing to suspend disbelief, so let's accept the ridiculous premise and dive in.... 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. —Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD
Library Journal


(Starred review.) An astute, piercing look at the value society and individuals place on appearance… impossible to put down and utterly dead-on in its assessment of human nature.
Booklist


[A] little over-the-top.... Still, there's something weirdly compelling about the whole excessive parade, and most people will keep reading just to find out how all the elaborate manipulations turn out.... [A]n unsettling portrait of the way extreme physical beauty or ugliness distort people's impressions.
Kirkus Reviews