Title: Hello Beautiful
Author: Ann Napolitano
Publisher: The Dial Press
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance
First Publication: 2023
Language: English
Book Summary: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
Meet the Padvano girls. Best friends and sisters, they are thought of as inseparable by everyone in their close-knit Chicago neighbourhood. Julia, the eldest, is the “rocket” of the family – she always has a destination in mind and clear plans for how to get there. Sylvie, the dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book and imagines a life for herself other than the expected path of wife and mother. Cecelia and Emmeline, the twins, are the artist and the caregiver. From childhood, the four sisters complete each other, expecting that their family will always be intact.
When Julia falls in love with William Walters, a history student and college sports star, she’s delighted by the way her plans for adulthood are coming together. A husband, a house, a family. But when darkness from William’s past begins to block the light of his future, it is Sylvie, not Julia, who steps in to help. Suddenly, things shift. Dynamics and relationships, priorities and secrets – everything that was once a given no longer is.
Rich and vivid, heartbreaking and heart-mending, Hello Beautiful captures the joy, tragedy, trust, and betrayal to ask: what does it mean to be a family? And once shattered, can it be pieced back together?
Book Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
Ann Napolitano’s latest novel Hello Beautiful is a poignant and emotionally complex family drama that explores the relationships between four sisters and the ripple effects of trauma across generations. Set between the 1960s and the early 2000s, the novel follows the Padavano sisters – Julia, Sylvie, Cecelia, and Emeline – as they navigate love, loss, motherhood, and their own identities and desires against the backdrop of pivotal historical moments.
The novel opens in 1960 with the brief life and tragic death of William Water’s older sister, Caroline. Her passing casts a permanent shadow over the Waters family that William grapple with over the ensuing decades. William grew up as an only child after his sister Caroline died when he was only a few days old. His parents, particularly his father, became distant after losing Caroline. William mostly kept to himself, finding solace in basketball which he was talented at from a young age. He graduated high school and earned a basketball scholarship to Northwestern.
The protagonists of the novel are the oldest Padavano sisters, Julia and Sylvie. Julia is ambitious, determined, and driven. She plans her life down to every detail and sees the world in straightforward causal relationships, believing she can control outcomes through sheer willpower. Sylvie, in contrast, is a dreamer and a romantic, more interested in losing herself in fiction than in worldly ambition.
The core relationships that structure the narrative are between the sisters themselves, with their mother Rose, and with the men that enter their lives. While the sisters share an unbreakable bond, their disparate personalities also lead to misunderstandings and tensions. Rose is a complicated maternal figure, by turns possessive and distant. The men – Charlie, William, and to a lesser extent Kent – disrupt and reshape the sisterly unit in different ways.
After a brief courtship, Julia marries William, envisioning him as the upstanding husband who will give her the secure middle-class future she desires. Their marriage begins auspiciously, but cracks soon emerge. William struggles with severe depression and a sense of purposelessness, while Julia refuses to see the depths of his unhappiness, pushing him to meet her expectations. William eventually attempts suicide, setting off a chain of events that alters the contours of the sisters’ relationships irrevocably.
The novel alternates between the perspectives of Julia and Sylvie, exposing both women’s hopes, flaws, and deepest wounds. Julia initially comes across as controlling and superficial, obsessed with appearances and social climbing. However, as the narrative gives insight into her psyche, a different picture emerges. Abandoned by her mother, Julia is profoundly insecure about her self-worth and seeks desperately to prove herself through external validation and rigidly constructed order. Her need for control masks a terror of chaos.
Sylvie, who appears flighty and romantic to Julia, harbors her own darkness. She conducts a series of passionless affairs as she waits to meet her one true love. But she also grapples with difficult questions about the nature of fulfillment and belonging. Sylvie’s interiority reveals a thoughtful, sensitive soul ill-suited to the strictures of conventional femininity.
Napolitano excels at portraying the messy complexities of sisterhood – the steadfast loyalty as well as the jealousies, the compatibilities and profound differences. Julia and Sylvie’s perspectives interweave to form a nuanced portrait of a lifelong relationship continually shaped by evolving personalities, emotional needs, and desires.
At times, the novel’s pace suffers due to drawn-out sections of excessive rumination. However, the characters are vividly rendered and emotionally compelling enough to maintain engagement. Napolitano perceptively sketches the social and cultural forces that circumscribe the sisters’ choices, from Julia’s thwarted professional ambitions to the stigma around Cecelia’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
The novel comes full circle with a moving denouement revolving around the sisters’ reconciliation with their mother. Napolitano avoids easy resolutions, instead leaving wounds partially healed with scars still visible. The bittersweet ending fittingly reflects her vision of sisterhood as a complex tapestry woven of memories, trauma, sacrifice, understanding, and love.
Ultimately, Hello Beautiful is a thoughtful exploration of the eternal dance between freedom and belonging. Julia and Sylvie, in very different ways, struggle to balance responsibility to family with individual identity and desire. Napolitano compassionately traces how their conflicted yearnings shape choices with echoing repercussions.
Without downplaying the centrality of sisterly and maternal bonds, the novel also insightfully examines Julia and Sylvie’s relationships with the key men in their lives. Their respective marriages reveal societal gendered expectations around marriage and femininity. William’s descent into suicidal depression evocatively captures the struggle with oppressive male gender norms.
On the whole, Hello Beautiful stands out for its poignant emotional resonance and textured character psychology. The 1970s suburban Chicago setting proves an immersive backdrop to delve into the complex interior lives of its heroines. Napolitano’s quietly perceptive prose illuminates intergenerational trauma’s subtle but indelible fingerprint on identity. An impactful family saga guaranteed to linger in the mind long after the final page.
