Hello Beautiful Paperback – 25 July 2024

Ann Napolitano’s latest novel Hello Beautiful is a poignant and emotionally complex family drama that explores the relationships between four sisters and the ripple effects of trauma across generations. Set between the 1960s and the early 2000s, the novel follows the Padavano sisters – Julia, Sylvie, Cecelia, and Emeline – as they navigate love, loss, motherhood, and their own identities and desires against the backdrop of pivotal historical moments.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.

it's good book

The Padvanos family, Charlie & his wife Rosie stayed in a small town called Pilsen in Chicago along with their four daughters viz Julia,Sylvie,Cecelia & Emeline.Julia is ten months older to Sylvie & that they strongly bond together.They share every bit of information that happens in their life while holding no secrets between them.Similarly the bonding between Emeline and Cecelia who are twins is also remarkable.The four daughters always hold a common perspective reflecting an unbiased love for one another.As both Rosie & Charlie couldn't do their college, Rosie desired that her daughters do their college and lead a much happier life.Though Rosie's expectations of her daughters are unspoken but she did held a view of high stakes of them.She inculcated positive ideas in her daughters like telling tales of Saints to them & hanging photographs of the Saints on the walls in the house etc.She wished that Charlie could do something more to make the family financially stable & many a times she talked her way to bring the change in her husband's thinking but her efforts remained elusive.Charlie, who loved poetry, prefferd to live a simpler and non pretentious life.He believed that a person is more important than the job he holds.Julia, who understood her mother closely, always wished that she could do something for the family. She was able to secure a scholarship in Northwestern University and joined the college to complete her graduation. Sylvie, on the other hand, worked in a library & as being romantic at heart and interested in reading,read hundreds of books like Wuthering Heights,Anna Karenina etc.and fancied her soulmate similar to one of those characters. (someone like *Heathcliff *),She also read poetry and sometimes used to recite a line or two of Walt Whitman's poems to Charlie to impress him as Charlie adored Walt Whitman & often mentions him & his poetry.The twins Cecelia & Emmeline are into painting and caregiving respectively.On the contrary to Padvano's siblings, we find another character, William Waters,who is raised by a grief-stricken parents.Their daughter Caroline, who was three years older to William, dies too young & the parents could not quite get out of that gloom.As a child William grew up feeling unwanted & neglected & enters into adulthood with a fractured past.He had an intrest in basketball that kept him away from his melancholy thoughts of being unwanted and most of the time he used to play alone.It's his basketball skills that secures him a scholarship at Northwestern University, where he joins for his graduation. Julia meets William at the university & that they both fall in love and later gets married.But Williams past & his love for basketball, couldn't quite fit into Julia's expectations of him and William's subsequent sucidal attempt, soon after the birth of their daughter,Alice forced her to think differently.Sylvie, who reads William's manuscripts earlier before,at the instance of Julia,understands him more deeply and emphasizes with his past.She gets drawn towards William & eventually gets married to him, when Julia shifts to New York with Alice.Sylvie's marriage to William distances Julia & the other three sisters. Earlier,Cecelia's getting pregnant without marriage, disappoints Rosie and her beliefs.Frustrated,she asks Cecelia to leave the house.When Charlie learns about the birth of his granddaughter,he visits the hospital where Cecelia delivers her baby, Isabella Rose Padvanoo.But unfortunately Charlie dies in the hallway at the hospital.After Charlie's death the good deeds he has done and the way he helped,people around Pilsen town came to the fore.Such small acts of kindness that the family never knew of Charlie, made them miss him even more.Equally intriguing is that the charectar of William.After his marriage to Sylvie,he improved bit by bit.His friends Kent and Arsh too did their best to help William come out of his depression.He started enjoying his work & derived the pleasure of helping others. When he learned about Sylvie's disease and the limited time she had shocked William and made him come out of his cell.He, now wanted to do the best that he could for Sylvie.He understood how much Sylvie missed her sister Julia & with out a second thought he calls and informs her of Sylvie's critical condition.His sole intention was to see the joy at Padvanos home by bringing all the sisters together for which he felt that he was responsible.It's the title of the book " Hello Beautiful" by Ann Napolitano, which drew me to read the review and then my intrest followed with the mention of the poet Walt Whitman that made me purchase & read.The book begins with the beautiful lines of the poet from the "Song Of Myself" to stimulate the interest and made me eager to complete reading the book.Besides,we also experience the idea of Universal Brotherhood & a few traces of Whimanism and his idealogy, coming out through a few charecters in the book. At the hospital,Charlie's whispering of the lines from,"Song of Myself" into the ears of his newly born granddaughter -- "For every atom belonging to me as good belonging to you " ,is quite impressive.The book also highlights the influence of parents behavior on children & the psychological effects the children carry when they growup into adults.Overall the book is an extraordinary entertainment to read and enjoy while learning the importance of family,relationships, and friendships.

Hello Beautiful is a storm of an emotional family drama set mainly in Chicago that will leave you spent completely. The story line and characters are strongly based on the classic Little Women. Yet, through the course of the novel, I found myself in so many diversions to that, that it kept me engrossed in a wholesome way.The four Padavano sisters Julia, Sylvie, Cecelia and Emeline are as closely knit as the March sisters. Into their lives, enters William Waters a neglected son who starts basking jn the Padavano family love. Charlie and Rose are the endearing Padavano parents who formed the backbone of the family. Until the unforseen tragedy unfolds.Each character grows and falls through the timeline wrapped in love, grief, success and loss. It took me as a reader through a roller coaster of emotions, there were scenes i was furious in and there were scenes my heart broke in. There was not a single moment pf dullness in the tale. While there were so many relationship dynamics that I couldn't accept easily, I realised it only made it more life like.If you are a fan of Little Women like me, you will enjoy this historical family drama. I plunged into my childhood days and I relived the classic with immense nostalgia and pleasure. A must read for all those who love this genre.

Something about this story made me realise how important your family is the attachment between the sisters is amazing they are wound to each other forever Sylvie lived even after her deathWilliam whose childhood was sad and lonely was lovingly accepted by all the padavano familyLove takes over and mistakes are forgivenLoved reading the book