Amanda Filipacchi's three previous novels (Nude Men, Vapor and Love Creeps) secured her reputation as a comic satirist who captures the dreams and frustrations of everywoman while exposing their costs. In The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty, she takes on the mixed blessings of female beauty with her signature wit and insight.
The story involves a tight circle of young New Yorkers who call themselves the Knights of Creation. Georgia is an acclaimed novelist wracked by self-doubt; Lily is an extremely unattractive but brilliant composer who uses her talents to seduce the shallow Strad; lovely Penelope makes ugly pottery she cannot sell. But the focus of the story is on Barb, an extraordinarily beautiful, unusually talented costume designer. Two years earlier, her friend Gabriel committed suicide, dazzled by her beauty and sick with love for her. Since then, Barb has hidden inside a fat suit and under a gray wig, determined that anyone new will love her for her inner beauty alone.
There's also a murder subplot, a delusional doorman and a delicious skewering of the shallow, self-serving media. And there's Peter, an anchorman perfect for Barb--except that, unbeknownst to her, he has schemed his way into her life after discovering old photos showing she's drop-dead gorgeous.
Will Barb accept Peter when she learns that he knows she's beautiful? Can she accept herself, beauty and all? The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty has a teeming cast of one-dimensional characters and a wildly improbable plot, but it's a funny and exuberant story that addresses the costs of a social preoccupation while losing none of its fairy-tale charm. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer