Beautiful

This magical tale of love and rivalry between two brothers in Mexico is an “intense, engaging, psychologically deep [novel that] lives up to its title” (Ex Libris).

Miguel is beautiful. His beauty is so rare and miraculous that it has made him the object of cult-like devotion in the city. With a mix of admiration and disquiet, his older brother Santiago observes the prodigious effect that Miguel’s looks have on his mother and father, neighbors, passersby, and the droves of female suitors who follow him everywhere. With Miguel constantly under the spotlight, Santiago is left to inhabit darker, hidden places, from where he will finally learn that life is not easy for anyone, even his prodigiously handsome brother.

Set in Mexico, this story is narrated with deep psychological insight yet shines with the mythical light of magical realism. Disappointments, flights, regrets, reunions, goodbyes, epiphanies make up this story, as we follow the two brothers, their family, the women they love, and the people around them—all forever marked, each in their own way, by their extraordinary encounter with Beauty.

“Massimo Cuomo’s writing, not the protagonist’s beauty, is what’s truly wonderful about this book.” —Coooperazione