NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book of the Year
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JUST LIKE BEAUTY is a first novel that places a timeless theme -- the adolescent yearning for love from mothers (and others) -- against a jarringly futuristic backdrop of high-tech food, mutant animals, socially sanctioned violence, and despoliation of the planet. This surprising juxtaposition gives author Lisa Lerner a fresh and funny way to explore family dynamics, gender roles, competitiveness, and "the beauty myth" in a society that keeps reinventing them anew for each generation. In the mold of Don Delillo's White Noise, JUST LIKE BEAUTY offers a comically trenchant look at where our culture is heading and the absurdity that passes for ordinary.
* EXCITING UPDATE *
Just Like Beauty is going to be a movie! Currently in pre-production with Lars Von Trier's Zentropa Production Company, set to shoot in 2019!!
“...captivating... a work of striking lyricism and jittery energy...Lerner writes in a prose style that is intricate, poetic, and full of surprises...In a lesser writer’s hands, such an exaggerated view of womanhood might have seemed silly or unbelieveable. But Lerner has the gifts to make it all work — the girls seem real, and you want them to escape.”
“...a gutsy and wildly imaginative first novel. It’s a freak show, but with human touches about the need for motherly approval and the ecstasy of first love. Bottom Line: Beautiful debut.”
“...more comic relief than feminist manifesto...weird, wacky and worth it.”
“...fiercely imagined... a bracing vision of how young women are taught to strive for a synthetic femininity.”