Beautiful You: A Novel

Chuck Palahniuk

Oct 2014 · Sold by Anchor

About this ebook

"A billion husbands are about to be replaced."

From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of a new product that gives new meaning to the term "self-help." 

Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of gratification for days on end. What's not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of feminine products to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for battery-powered world domination must be stopped. But how?

 

Ratings and reviews

I was very dissapointed. I am a huge fan of Fight Club, Choke, and Rant. I would normally say that chuck is my favorite author. Sadly, reading BY felt less like reading a fresh, new novel and watching my favorite author grovel for attention by replicating his more famous works. I was saddened by the same use of foreshadowing for the intro, the same mention of meryl streep, and the reciting of the quote, "self improvement is masturbation" that was used in fight club.

If only I could wax my legs in the amount of time it takes for a man to walk up the stairs. I'm going to blame this on poor research. A fun read nonetheless. Thank you. "As Penny heard Tad’s footsteps mount the stairs, she had barely enough time to curl her eyelashes, wax her legs, and apply perfume behind her ears."

The protagonist made it through four years of college and two years of law school. Yet throughout the book she demonstrates no deductive reasoning even when given the most obvious clues. I liked the story. And Palahniuk is a good writer. But I took away two stars for Penny being a dolt.

About the author

CHUCK PALAHNIUK is the author of thirteen novels—Doomed, Damned, Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Fight Club—which all have sold more than five million copies in the United States. He is also the author Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. Visit him on the web at chuckpalahniuk.net.