Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Cooper Jones ruminates on and reckons with her disability as well as her identity as a whole. It’s impossible not to be struck by the opening: “I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether or not my life is worth living.” Almost 20 pages later, she explains, “I was born without a sacrum, the bone that connects the spine to the pelvis.” Due to her physical disability, “people simply felt it was hard to include me and easier to leave me on the margins, invisible. I learned to preempt the inevitable and exclude myself.” The book is divided more geographically than temporally. The author writes about her solo trips to Italy and Cambodia; living in New York with her husband and son; conversations with her mother; stories about her childhood, in Kathmandu and then Kansas; and her relationship with her absent father. Cooper Jones, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist and philosophy professor, quotes myriad authors and philosophers on the subject of beauty, including Plotinus, Kant, Iris Murdoch, Maria Popova, and others. She takes her title from British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, who described “easy beauty” as “apparent and unchallenging.” Difficult beauty, comparatively, requires greater endurance and bandwidth of perception. Parts of the book are repetitive. For example, she writes, doctors “told my mother I’d never be able to get pregnant….My parents listened to the doctors, believed their predictions”; in a subsequent chapter, “Doctors had told me my entire life that I couldn’t get pregnant….My parents believed the doctors and so did I.” The author ultimately discovered her own pregnancy five months into it. The book’s second part is named “The Kestrel,” plucked from a Murdoch passage that leads Cooper Jones to realize that “by paying attention to beauty, I could break free of myself.” Near the end, she acknowledges the realness of the life we’ve all been given (“dreadfully normal and sublime”) and resolves, “I would no longer betray its beauty by wishing it otherwise.” By turns revelatory, tedious, entertaining, and entirely human. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Cooper Jones ruminates on and reckons with her disability as well as her identity as a whole.Its impossible not to be struck by the opening: I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether or not my life is worth living. Almost 20 pages later, she explains, I was born without a sacrum, the bone that connects the spine to the pelvis. Due to her physical disability, people simply felt it was hard to include me and easier to leave me on the margins, invisible. I learned to preempt the inevitable and exclude myself. The book is divided more geographically than temporally. The author writes about her solo trips to Italy and Cambodia; living in New York with her husband and son; conversations with her mother; stories about her childhood, in Kathmandu and then Kansas; and her relationship with her absent father. Cooper Jones, a Pulitzer Prizenominated journalist and philosophy professor, quotes myriad authors and philosophers on the subject of beauty, including Plotinus, Kant, Iris Murdoch, Maria Popova, and others. She takes her title from British philosopher Bernard Bosanquet, who described easy beauty as apparent and unchallenging. Difficult beauty, comparatively, requires greater endurance and bandwidth of perception. Parts of the book are repetitive. For example, she writes, doctors told my mother Id never be able to get pregnant.My parents listened to the doctors, believed their predictions; in a subsequent chapter, Doctors had told me my entire life that I couldnt get pregnant.My parents believed the doctors and so did I. The author ultimately discovered her own pregnancy five months into it. The books second part is named The Kestrel, plucked from a Murdoch passage that leads Cooper Jones to realize that by paying attention to beauty, I could break free of myself. Near the end, she acknowledges the realness of the life weve all been given (dreadfully normal and sublime) and resolves, I would no longer betray its beauty by wishing it otherwise.By turns revelatory, tedious, entertaining, and entirely human. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.