Blink Book Review #11: "Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano

"Hello Beautiful” by Anna Napolitano is the sweeping story of a large chaotic family in the late ‘70s – early ‘80s with more than its share of eccentricities. It’s a book about love, loss, low lows and high highs, family, forgiveness, grudges and grace.  

The Padavano family of four girls and their parents live in a working class Chicago suburb. Alcoholic father + mother mired in unfulfilled dreams = four daughters who heavily depend on each other while, at the same time, also learn to rely on their individual strengths.

Willams Waters, a broken young man saved only by his basketball talent, joins the family by way of his marriage to the oldest daughter, Julia. The imbalance that results throws the entire family into a series of life-altering changes.

Each of the characters is developed enough to firmly illustrate their individual superpowers. For William, his superpower begins as talent in basketball. For Julia, it appears to be her ambition. The second sister Sylvie, only ten months younger than Julia, is a besotted book lover. Cecelia sees the world through her art while her compassionate twin Emeline is the one who most wants to be a mom but is the one who can’t. By the end of the book, the reader sees the attributes that were laid out early in the book were only a vehicle for the characters’ real strengths to later emerge.

The writing in this book is magnificent! Napolitano is a master storyteller whose vivid descriptions and believable dialogue kept me turning pages. If I had read a personal copy instead of a library book, this one would be marked up with all my favorite passages and turns of words.

If you’re a “Little Women” fan, this book also pays homage to the four March sisters (although I must admit I didn’t have enough of a recollection of the Little Women characters and story for this to really resonate with me).

I often pick up a book based on the cover catching my eye, and the cover art on this book is particularly appealing. I even went so far as to research the artist and how she came to grace the cover of the book. I did find her name – Jessica Miller – and learned she is a portrait artist out of the Hudson River Valley, but wasn’t able to find anything more about how her work ended up as the book’s cover art.