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The description of this book said "a thriller, " LIAR. This book was three parts New York art scene guide book and one part thriller,
It followed an egotistical artist who was obsessed with beauty and spent most of the novel talking about what his perfect woman looked like by listing off actresses and models and how he would make them more beautiful.
His obsession quickly gets him in a lot of legal trouble, But the "trouble happened in literally the lastpages of the book,
If you are looking for a page turning thriller, This isn't it.
If you are looking for an inside on the New York art scene and how shallow and self centered they are, . Pick up this book! This book is what happened when The Picture of Dorian Gray and American Psycho loved each other very much and decided to make a baby together.
I'm not sure how to describe my experience reading this book, Jarring and uncomfortable, yet intriguing I felt a bit antsy the entire time, Like a train wreck I really wanted to stop watching, but I needed to follow it through to the end, To know what happened. I couldn't wait for it to just be over, but somehow, not in a totally negative way,
The narrator is an extreme narcissist with shades of obsessive compulsive behavior and possibly a little sociopathic thinking mixed in, For funsies, ya know. It was an uncomfortable mind to live in forchapters,
All in all, I found it interesting, It wasn't a "page turner "in the classic sense of the phrase, There wasn't a lot of suspense built up, But the end still managed to surprise me, most perfect beauty is obtained by science and somehow this book convinces you that can exist, with consequences of course This story has a captivating and engrossing will also elements of the haunting and scary on beauty that would have you either reconsider facial surgery, for cosmetic reasons, or run to the phone to book an op.
I love thew way the author has sculptured this main character a lover of beauty and an artist who loves to recreate the face, The story reels you in with the first person narrative of the voice of the character, he hypnotically takes you under his wing in a Humbert, from Lolita, like style.
This was well researched a story of fiction, filled with references and musings on preColumbian art and culture, that could not be far from the truth, the real world we live today.
Death becomes her fans would love this and The Fly come to think of it when considering the goings wrong side of cosmetic surgery featured within this tale.
A real good story that leaves you with plenty of food for thought and chills in your spine,
Before you run to the knife think twice after reading Beauty by Brian DAmato
“Its just too disturbing for people, I mean, people can deal with knowing that youve had a lift, or whatever, but if they find out that your whole face isnt really alive at all, its just plastic, theyre liable to get grossed out.
get grossed out by it myself sometimes, ” They looked at me. “I mean, when I see the people Ive done, sometimes it just flashes into my head that they arent really alive, and I get all weirded out by it.
”
“But this was going to be one of the strangest faces ever, It really was
abstract, All the time Id put in as an abstract artist was paying off in this
figurative project, I was working on such a basic level, with the basic sign of human existence, What was it about eyes, nose, and mouth that was so important Eyes, nose, and mouth are some sort of basic metaphor for the structure of the universeor did I say this before
I felt I was going to be the last artist to relive that experience that Balzac
was talking about, the experience of creating ideal facial beauty, in a meaningful way.
I was going to be Leo, Mike, and Raph for the last time, I was the first to do what they did, in a twentiethcentury way, A
twentyfirstcentury way. Suddenly there was a reason for all the beauty lore I had internalized for so long and had then realised had no place in the art of the present.
Id made it a place, ”
“A mole.
Of course. What would Marilyn or Madonna or Cindy Crawford be without their moles Nothing, I thought, Or a lot less. Its interesting that moles are called “beauty marks, ” What was it about them that made them so alluring Are they like a sign that you can approach the goddess
I spent a long time composing its position, but I finally decided the black spot would go nearly a centimeter above the left corner of her lip.
A hair off to the left, The abstract element would round out her effect, It would make her unique and human and sexy and somehow pathetic, Because a mole is an intimation of death, ”
“Socrates says:
Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls,
I read a lot of Baudelaire, He had a darker take on the issue, He was good on the cruelty of beauty:
I am beautiful mortals, as a dream in stone,
My breasts kill each man in his turn, and they Were made to inspire in every poet his own Great love,
as silent and eternal as clay.
Because,
to fascinate my loveslaves,
I Have mirrors which make every object bright:
My eyes, my giant eyes eternal light!
The eyes thing again.
Eyes really were the seat of beauty, Like the Elizabeth Taylor thing, Eyes, large eyes, doelike eyes, eyes are so weird, they dont look like anything else to do with bodies or fleshiness or anything, theyre round and abstract, and they come in strange colours, white and black and green.
What was so magical about large eyes Maybe ever are just magical in general and bigger eyes are more magical, Of course, bigger eyes make you look younger, But theyre also the windows of the soul, you know, so when you have big eyes, youre intimate with everyone, because they can see into your soul, Id been reading too much.
”
“I was elated, like I was on Xtasy, Imagine having the power to give people a second chance, To give them almost eternal youth, I could turn straw into gold, Something out of nothing. I could give beauty, fame, money, powerit was incredible, It was as though I were Ponce de Leon and I had discovered the Fountain of Youth, I was a God. And I was immortal, I was a shapechanger, A werewolf, a vampire, a skinswitcher, I could be anything I wanted to be, anyone at all, ”
“Minaz is my design, Shell be the first in a race of cyborgs, halfhuman, halftechnology Uberbeings, The new order of man, The dawn of a new age, ”
also sitelink com/review/beautybybriandamato/ This book would be perfect for those who have studied art and the beauty industry, At times, there was so much namedropping, I lost the thread of the story, The plot itself was very good and I enjoyed following the lead character, although he isn't very likeable and not meant to be, A lot of philosophy is thrown in as food for thought.
I'm glad I read it, and will try other books by this author, but I don't recommend this one for everyone, BD is fiercely intelligent, talented and strange, What a book. A New York artist obsessed with aesthetic perfection is improving women with a revolutionary new surgery from his apartment, Creating living art purely for vanity's sake, The narrator is unforgettable not a nice guy, More like Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho" than anything else that comes to mind, Like it or not this is genius, and one of the most unique stories I've run across in a long time, An interesting and horrific tale that taps into our obsession with beauty, and the lengths we will go to attain it,
Published in, some of the language is obviously dated, as technology has changed the landscape of our lives, That said, Brian D'Amato captures neurosis, compulsions, fear, and glamour well, A novel concept of a complete change of one's face into another, However, written poorly. I'm not a huge fan of fiction but I liked it,
It's about an artist who uses an FDA unapproved skin substitute to create totally new faces for women,
Though many of the details of the early's New York art scene were lost on me I found plenty humor and excellent writing, Worth the time if you can stand a pretentious twit for a narrator, One of my alltime three favourite books, just soooooo amazing, The blurb makes it sound a little like a horror novel, and it is in a way, but it's so much more than that, Like no other book I've ever read, Slightly disturbing, yet captivating. Well researched level of detail and beautifully written, The unusual premise kept twisting all the way through to the bitter end, Maybe youd want to read this if youd exhausted the works of
Bret Easton Ellis and desperately wanted something less subtle and more racist, more anxious, more vulnerable.
Im not sure if the author was trying to be selfaware or if he is actually just a massive jerk, but the only thing that kept me going through the book was a desire for something truly awful to happen to the narrator.
I guess if you have an education from Yale and nothing much to show for it then you may as well cram all the esoteric pomo theory you know into a vaguely coherent novel instead of doing literally anything else with your life.
It reads a little like a selfconscious/selfcongratulatory exegesis one might churn out after graduating from undergraduate arts with a high grade point average and few career aspirations.
The premise is interesting enough, but it gets totally absurd and flimsy by the end, and maybe that was intentional, because it barely managed to be shocking.
Finished it in less than a day because I find dated social satire from the late 's to be so pleasantly relatable, Disturbingly artistic story. Jamie's personality freaks me out, but I still understand where he's coming from, and his strange mix of forward New Yorker and mentally unstable artist combine to create someone very real.
On the whole, the book didn't change my life, but I enjoyed the perspective, Interesting, intellectual read. This book is incredibly creepy, and really gets at the heart of a sexist and destructive beauty industry, That being said, it could have been aboutpages shorter, The characters were clearly established quickly, and it was pretty clear where the book was going, I just wish it had gotten there a little more quickly.
Strong first novel by author of In the Courts of the Sun and The Sacrifice Game, Explores our cultural obsession with facial beauty in insightful and unsettling ways, Protagonist devolves from a pretentious jerk to someone much scarier as the book progresses, Insider commentary about the superficiality of the art world, along with tantalising glimpses of the author's fascination with the Maya make this book well worth reading for fans of D'Amato's brilliant trilogy in progress.
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