Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk

Published by Doubleday on October 21, 2014

"I love you because you're so average" is not the nicest compliment Penny Harrigan has ever heard, but since Linus Maxwell, the world's richest man, is only describing her "textbook" genitalia, she can live with it. Having satisfied supermodels and the first female American president, Maxwell knows something about female parts. He is developing a new product line called Beautiful You that might render men obsolete. The products are designed to enhance female erotic pleasure and Penny is the latest in a long line of test subjects, each of whom has been dismissed from the project after 136 blissful days.

Penny rejects both the "women must go to law school" and the "women must stay at home and raise the kids" model but is struggling to find a third way. She would also like to be less lonely. The pleasure provided by the Beautiful You gadgetry is welcome but it is not a substitute for love ... or is it?

Whether Penny will ever get love from Maxwell is a mystery to which Palahniuk provides conflicting clues through much of the novel. Maxwell wears a lab coat during his sexual encounters. When he participates more actively, he scribbles in his notebook (without breaking stride) and studies readouts of pulse rate and blood pressure. Still, he seems to have genuine feelings for Penny. All of this is funny but it also makes a telling point about the clinical and emotional elements of sex. Either element alone (thrilling sex without love or loving sex without thrills) can be rewarding but the combination is a powerful form of witchcraft.

Beautiful You suggests that women pay the price for male inventiveness. The desire of men to control women and the empowerment of women to resist that control is a related theme, one that is advanced here with a conspiracy to enslave women for an insidious (albeit nonsexual) purpose. Beautiful You also explores the changing role of women in society and advances near-future technology as the latest weapon in the battle of the sexes, all from the satirical perspective that Chuck Palahniuk often adopts.

There is not a surfeit of substance in Beautiful You -- most of the satirical points it makes are obvious ("personal fulfillment" can be a selfish desire) and its targets (consumerism, Promise Keepers, corrupt politicians, greedy lawyers, controlling men, trendy women) are easy and familiar -- but the argument it makes in favor of a balance between deep love and astonishing sex is sound. The graphic nature of some scenes and the opening rape might offend sensitive readers but none of the descriptive text is crude or (from my perspective, at least) offensive. Its bawdy nature may be too much for some readers, its silliness too silly for others, but for me, both of those factors added to the humor, some of which is deceptively clever. I particularly enjoyed the way all the plot elements tie together at the end.

On the downside, Palahniuk's prose occasionally has a rushed, unedited feel and I found the over-the-top storyline, while amusing, to be too over-the-top to provoke many belly laughs. Beautiful You is not one of Palahniuk's best literary efforts, but it is sufficiently entertaining to earn my recommendation.

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