Pretty

Lauren, Jillian. Pretty: a Novel. New York: Plume, 2011.

This is another one of those can’t-put-down books that I read in just seven hours time (on a car ride from Jamestown, New York to Western MA).  I was mesmerized by the characters, the story, everything. Beth “Bebe” Baker has just lost her boyfriend in a horrific accident. Disfigured from crawling over broken glass and deeply dependent on drugs she enters a halfway house to find sobriety and a sense of self. There, and at the cosmetology school, she meets a cast of misfit characters who take her under their own broken wings. It’s a troubling tale of coming to terms with not just the past, but the unknown future as well.
Before reading Pretty I had just finished reading Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts and I think I had that storyline running through my head because I found a few similarities where there shouldn’t have been. Letts’s character, Novalee Nation, shares many personality traits and similar experiences with Lauren’s character, Beth “Bebe” Baker. Both are young woman essentially far from home and practically homeless (Novalee lives in a Wal-Mart and Bebe lives in a rehab halfway house). Less than scrupulous men abandon both women. Both women deal with pregnancy. Both women adopt creatives outlets as a coping mechanism and a means of escape (Novalee takes up photography while Bebe studies cosmetology). Both women search for salvation in the arms of a quirky community of misfits. Both experience the return of lovers and learn to let go.
But for all that, this is where the similarities end. Lauren’s style of writing in Pretty is raw, gritty, real. While the title of the book is  Pretty Bebe is someone who isn’t always pretty. She has her moments of displaying downright ugly. This characteristic just makes her all the more human. One example of this reality is the wearing down of her resolve to stay away from someone less than good for her. This man is a connection to her drug addled past and Bebe knows that in order to remain sober she needs refuse all contact with him. She does well to ignore his phone calls until the rest of her life starts to unravel and she weakens…but isn’t that always the way?
This is a quick read…but that’s a good thing because that only means you’ll have time to start at page one and read it all over again.