Beautyland: A Novel

chanteuses

One of the most underwhelming human American expressions of support is: Congrats. Its brevity cancels its sentiment. If someone truly cared about their friend’s achievement, they would finish the word. Instead, congrats: You are not worth ulation.

Human beings design irrigation systems that carry water billions of miles but cannot invent an ironing board that opens without sounding like a metal seizure.

decepticated,

Adina realizes friendships are reincarnations.

Each row home is designed like a cadaver lying flat on a table: at the prow of the apartment is an abbreviated entryway that normally holds Adina’s kicked-off boots and her mother’s neatly arranged work pumps, hallway like a throat leading to the open kitchen, the torso a family room big enough to hold a couch and a half-moon table covered in the o

Toni has stopped trying to tame her thick, screaming hair and it has repaid her by arcing around her face in a way that gives her chin narrative.

Every so often the passing 7 train dismantles her.

gyre

“molti muscoli.”