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Hello Beautiful (Oprah's Book Club): A Novel Hardcover – March 14, 2023
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“Another tender tearjerker . . . Napolitano chronicles life’s highs and lows with aching precision.”—The Washington Post
ONE OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Vogue, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Post, She Reads, Bookreporter
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe Dial Press
- Publication dateMarch 14, 2023
- Dimensions6.47 x 1.3 x 9.53 inches
- ISBN-100593243730
- ISBN-13978-0593243732
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Review
“This sumptuous family saga is one of those rare novels whose singular characters are so beautifully rendered, it’s as if they’re your best friends, and you’re grateful to be in their orbit.”—Oprah Quarterly
“Hello Beautiful will make you weep buckets because you come to care so deeply about the characters and their fates. . . . [Napolitano] compels us to contemplate the complex tapestry of family love that can, despite grief and loss, still knit us together. She helps us see ourselves—and each other—whole.”—The Washington Post
“A sprawling, hugely affecting novel [filled with] empathetic characters and rich writing . . . [Hello Beautiful] has rightfully earned comparisons to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, with its four close, vibrant sisters and the lonely outsider who infiltrates their circle.”—Shondaland
“This is a warm blanket of a book, one that reminds you of the enveloping power of literature and leaves you very grateful to have encountered it.”—Vogue
“Little Women fans will be endeared by Hello Beautiful's homage to the March siblings, in the form of the four Padavano sisters. Any lover of a sweeping family saga will be moved by the Padavanos’ unraveling.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“Napolitano’s novel will make you think deeply about sisterhood and what we choose to share with those we love.”—Town & Country
“Can love make a broken person whole? That is the simple but compelling question at the center of . . . this engrossing and emotional family drama.”—E! Online
“Absorbing.”—AARP
“Napolitano is a master of examining what binds us to family, what makes family, and how to love in difficult times.”—Literary Hub
“A family drama with echoes of classics and characters who are distinctly written. As a reader, you’ll laugh and grieve with William and the Padavanos as they go through life—soaring as much as they stumble.”—Book Riot
“Ann Napolitano’s new novel, Hello Beautiful, is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It’s a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, New York Times bestselling author of The Paper Palace
“A rich, complex family saga, Hello Beautiful is a portrait oflove and grief in equal measure. Napolitano’s prose is so lovely, so keenly perceptive, that it held me captive until I finished. A lot of people are going to love this story.”—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
“Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving and propulsive novel about the deepest connections of family and love, trauma and healing. In intricately elegant prose, Ann Napolitano explores both the cost and power of loyalty and honesty. This is a book to treasure and share with friends and loved ones.”—Angie Kim, bestselling author of Miracle Creek
“Hello Beautiful is the work of a great author at the height of her powers. Equally immersive, emotional, and brilliantly crafted, this is an early contender for best novel of the year.”—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
“This is a story about family and sisters and storytelling, but it’s also an examination of identity and the consequences of doing love badly and how love can be redeemed. Read this book! You’ll be glad you did.”—Therese Anne Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of It All Comes Down to This
“This is a richly woven story about family, but it’s also a unique take on Little Women. There are no heroes or villains here, only people—flawed and loving and striving like the rest of us. ‘Generosity’ is the word that comes to mind when I reflect on this gorgeous novel.”—Allegra Goodman, New York Times bestselling author of The Cookbook Collector and Sam
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
February 1960–December 1978
For the first six days of William Waters’s life, he was not an only child. He had a three-year-old sister, a redhead named Caroline after John F. Kennedy’s daughter. There were silent home movies of Caroline in which William’s father looked like he was laughing, a sight William never saw again. His father’s face looked open, and the tiny redhead, who pulled her dress over her face and ran in giggling circles in one of the movies, was apparently the reason. Caroline developed a fever and a cough while William and his mother were in the hospital after his birth. When they came home, the little girl seemed to be on the mend, but the cough was still bad, and when her parents went into her room to get her one morning, they found her dead in her crib.
William’s parents never mentioned Caroline while William was growing up. There was one photograph of her on the end table in the living room, which William traveled to occasionally in order to convince himself that he’d actually had a sister. The family moved to a navy-shingled house on the other side of Newton—a suburb of Boston—and in that house, William was an only child. His father was an accountant who worked long hours downtown. With his daughter gone, the man’s face never opened again. William’s mother smoked cigarettes and drank bourbon in the living room, sometimes alone and sometimes with a female neighbor. She had a collection of ruffled aprons that she wore while preparing meals, and she became agitated whenever one became stained or messy.
“Maybe you shouldn’t wear the aprons while you cook,” William said once, when his mother was red-faced and on the verge of tears over a dark blotch of gravy on the fabric. “You could tuck a dish towel in your belt instead, like Mrs. Kornet does.”
His mother looked at him as if he’d spoken in Greek. William said, “Mrs. Kornet, who lives next door? Her dish towel?”
From the age of five, William would walk to the nearby park most afternoons with a basketball, because basketball, unlike baseball or football, was a game he could play alone. There was a neglected outdoor court that usually had a hoop free, and he would shoot for hours, pretending he was a Celtics player. Bill Russell was his favorite, but to be Russell you needed someone else to block or defend against. Sam Jones was the best shooter, so William was usually Jones. He tried to imitate the guard’s perfect shooting form while pretending the trees that surrounded the court were cheering fans.
One afternoon when he was ten years old, he showed up at the court and found it occupied. Boys—maybe six of them, about William’s age—were chasing one another and a ball between the hoops. William started to back away, but one of the boys called, “Hey, wanna play?” And then, without waiting for William to answer: “You’re on the blue team.” Within seconds, William was swept into the game, his heart pounding in his chest. A kid passed him the ball, and he passed it right back, afraid to shoot and miss and be told he was terrible. A few minutes later, the game broke up abruptly because someone needed to get home, and the boys spilled off the court in different directions. William walked home, his heart still rattling in his chest. After that, the boys were occasionally on the court when William showed up with his ball. There was no discernible schedule to their appearances, but they always waved him into the game as if he were one of them. This never stopped being shocking to William. Kids and adults had always looked past him, as if he were invisible. His parents hardly looked at him at all. William had accepted all of this and thought it was understandable; he was, after all, boring and forgettable. His primary characteristic was pallor: He had sand-colored hair, light-blue eyes, and the very white skin shared by people of English and Irish descent. On the inside, William knew, he was as uninteresting and muted as his looks. He never spoke at school, and no one played with him. But the boys on the basketball court offered William a chance to be part of something for the first time, without having to talk.
In fifth grade, the gym teacher at his elementary school said, “I see you out there shooting baskets in the afternoons. How tall is your father?”
William stared at the man blankly. “I’m not sure. Normal height?”
“Okay, so you’ll probably be a point guard. You need to work on your handle. You know Bill Bradley? That gawky guy on the Knicks? When he was a kid, he taped cardboard to his glasses so he couldn’t look down, couldn’t see his feet. And then he dribbled up and down the sidewalk wearing those glasses. He looked crazy, no doubt, but his handle got real tight. He has a perfect feel for how the ball will bounce and how to find it without looking.”
William sprinted home that afternoon, his entire body buzzing. This was the first time a grown-up had looked directly at him—noticed him, and noticed what he was doing—and the attention threw him into distress. William had a sneezing fit while he was digging for a pair of toy glasses in the back of his desk drawer. He visited the bathroom twice before he carefully taped rectangular pieces of cardboard to the bottom of the glasses.
Whenever William felt sick or odd, he worried he was going to die. At least once a month he would crawl under his covers after school, convinced he was terminally ill. He wouldn’t tell his parents, because illness wasn’t permitted in his house. Coughing, in particular, was treated as a horrific betrayal. When William had a cold, he allowed himself to cough only in his closet with the door closed, his face muffled by the row of hanging button-down shirts he had to wear for school. He was aware of that familiar worry tickling his shoulders and the back of his head while he ran outside with the ball and glasses. But William had no time for illness now, no time for fear. This felt like the final click of his identity falling into place. The boys on the court had recognized him, and the gym teacher had too. William might have had no idea who he was, but the world had told him: He was a basketball player.
The gym teacher gave him additional tips that allowed William to develop more skills. “For defense: Push kids away with your shoulder and your butt. The refs won’t call those as fouls. Do sprints: Get a quick first step and beat your man off the dribble.” William worked on his passing too, so he could feed the ball to the best players in the park. He wanted to keep his place on the court, and he knew that if he made the other boys better, he had value. He learned where to run to provide space for the shooters to cut in to. He set screens so they could take their favorite shots. The boys slapped William on the back after a successful play, and they always wanted him on their side. This acceptance calmed some of the fear William carried inside him; on the basketball court, he knew what to do.
By the time William entered high school, he was a good-enough player to start for the varsity team. He was five foot eight and played point guard. His hours of practice with the glasses had paid off; he was by far the best dribbler on the team, and he had a nice midrange jumper. He’d worked on his rebounding, which helped offset his team’s turnovers. Passing was still William’s best skill, and his teammates appreciated that they had better games when he was in the lineup. He was the only freshman on the varsity team, and so when his older teammates drank beer in the basement of whoever’s parents were willing to look the other way, William was never invited. His teammates were shocked—everyone was shocked—when, in the summer after his sophomore year, William grew five inches. Once he started growing, his body seemed unable to stop, and by the end of high school he was six foot seven. He couldn’t eat enough to keep up with his growth and became shockingly thin. His mother looked frightened when he lurched into the kitchen every morning, and she’d hand him a snack whenever he passed nearby. She seemed to think his skinniness reflected badly on her, because feeding him was her job. His parents sometimes came to his basketball games, but at odd intervals, and they sat politely in the stands, appearing not to know anyone on the court.
His parents weren’t there for the game when William went for a rebound and was shoved in the air. His body twisted while he fell, and he landed awkwardly on his right knee. The joint absorbed all of the impact, and all of his weight. William heard his knee make a noise, and then a fog descended. His coach, who seemed to have only two registers—shouting and mumbling—was yelling in his ear: “You okay, Waters?” William generally responded to both the shouts and the mumbles by phrasing everything he said as a question; he never felt sure enough to lay claim to a statement. He cleared his throat. The fog around him, and inside him, was dense and laced with pain that was radiating from his knee. He said, “No.”
Product details
- Publisher : The Dial Press (March 14, 2023)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0593243730
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593243732
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.47 x 1.3 x 9.53 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #25 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #42 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #44 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Ann Napolitano's new novel, Hello Beautiful, will be published on March 14th, 2023 by Dial Press in the US and on July 13th by Viking Penguin in the UK. Her novel, Dear Edward, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna selection, and is now an Apple TV+ series starring Connie Britton. She is the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach. She was the Associate Editor of One Story literary magazine for seven years, and received an MFA from New York University. She has taught fiction writing for Brooklyn College's MFA program, New York University's School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers' Workshop.
Dear Edward was published by Dial Press in the United States, and by Viking Penguin in the United Kingdom. It was chosen as one of the best novels of 2020 by The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Amazon, Real Simple, Fast Company, Parade, Woman's World and more. The novel currently has twenty-six international publishers. For more information about Ann or her books, please visit www.annnapolitano.com.
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Thank you Ann Napoirano
While it’s a beautiful story, I must say, justice for Julia, she didn’t deserve all of that pain.
A heartwarming and sometimes sad story, I even got angry a few times of what was going on. But I will admit I really enjoyed the story and look forward to discussing this book at my club meeting next week.
Top reviews from other countries
It made me think of my family, our childhood hopes, how childhood trauma influences your adult decisions. I loved the phrase at the end - grief is love. Forgiveness is love.
Reviewed in Mexico on November 28, 2023
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.