Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang is a body horror thriller which explores the narrator's experience of trauma, race, and beauty. The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the book, is an excellent pianist and plays at a well-known conservatory, but when her parents get into an accident after what becomes her last performance, she turns to Holistik, a company focused on beauty and preserving youth in appearance.
This book was very intriguing and complex for me. I read it for Literary League, a digital and in-person book club across the United States, which makes sense for me since horror is not my typical genre. I liked the looming, mysterious feeling that kept me captivated throughout the entire book. The body horror really comes in with the organic and natural products that Holistik promotes, some of which are really disturbing, as you see in the effects in some of the people who use the products longer than the narrator.
One of the biggest critiques I had of this book was that it felt short. I thought the ending was not as satisfying as it could have been and a little rushed, but after going to an event and hearing the author speak, I understood that the ending was meant to be neutral, not entirely happy or tragic in any way.
This debut novel also explored themes of assimilation for Asian and Asian American women. The narrator's only identifying feature is that she is born of two Chinese immigrants who fled during the Cultural Revolution, and she notices that everyone at Holistik has different names than their legal names and start to look the same, possibly as a critique of beauty standards in our world. I thought this kind of conversation was incredibly compelling in this context, especially with the products and horrific bodily ailments that they caused.
Have you read Natural Beauty? What were your thoughts on it?
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