North Of Beautiful

Once upon a time, I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning while sitting under the covers in a darkened air force base hotel, watching a PBS Nova special about the magnetic poles. (hold on while I push up my nerd glasses) The people I was with were all asleep but I was watching it, flabbergasted, and wanting to wake them up--because I never knew, until that moment, that what we know as magnetic north and south have changed several times in the history of Earth. Can you imagine? Obviously it blew my mind. And we're overdue for another change! (Here's the link if you are interested: Your Mind Blown)

Anyway, the point of this story is that this book has a map and discovery theme that I found totally refreshing. Though the story is one show more of self discovery and relationship evaluation, I felt like the author did an amazing job of making the story original and the characters believable and multidimensional. After reading, I can say that this book evoked the same sort of reaction from me that I felt after reading [b:Saving Francesca|82434|Saving Francesca|Melina Marchetta|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302788502s/82434.jpg|1369647]--I really enjoyed it and moreso because it dealt with heavier issues in a realistic way. In this novel, the protagonist is a girl who has a large portwine stain birthmark on her face which resulted in teasing from her peers and low self-esteem. While she does come into herself, and that is the largest focus of the book, the storyline I felt most involved in was that of the family dynamics.

The way [a:Justina Chen Headley|190922|Justina Chen Headley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1279772065p2/190922.jpg] writes family scenes is so real that I actually cried thinking about how heart-wrenching being in that situation would be. Each member of a family has a different impact on your life and Headley's writing made me think about where the pressures in my life are coming from--good and bad--and how the failure of someone in your family can devastate other people nearly as much as the person who failed at something. And, in the same vein, one person's negativity or rudeness can ruin an adventure/day/dinner for the entire family. (Boy, do I ever know what that is about...)

Headley wove so many interesting tidbits into this story that I really can't talk about them all, but here are a few more topics that I found of particular interest:

*Cartographers drew dragons and sea monsters in sections of the oceans on maps to keep people from going to those areas. (who knew?!)
*As adults, I feel we accept a lot more quirks in people. It saddens me to think how many people feel left out in high school.
*Memento mori
*Headley mentions a mnemonic device to remember the streets in downtown Seattle! Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest (Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, Pine)
*I want to go geocaching.

I am between 4 and 5 stars on this book but I'm closer to the 5 so that's what it gets. (Edited it down 5/11) I definitely recommend it but beware, the love interest is goth. At first, I didn't get it, but I really came to like him by the end. You will, too. show less

Terra Cooper, 16, has a port-wine stain birthmark that pretty much covers the entire right side of her face. Her father, an emotionally abusive man, has always scorned her for being ugly. He also laughs at her art collages, undermining her confidence in something that means a great deal to her. He is a cartographer, can’t tolerate imperfection, and tries to make his family fit into the rigid lines with which he has circumscribed his life.

Her mother Lois, likewise reviled by Terra’s father - in her case for having gained weight, keeps scheduling Terra for surgeries to try to fix her face, in part to placate the father. Terra and her mom have both internalized the constant criticisms. Terra has a veritable make-up shop in her room to show more help disguise her face for the times when she can’t swing her long hair over her face. Lois takes her comfort in the very activity that drives her husband’s cruel remarks; she eats and eats to fill the void in her life.

While Lois is driving Terra back from yet another unsuccessful treatment on her face, they hit some black ice at a rest area, and slam into a Range Rover, almost killing the boy standing outside of it. Thus they meet the incredibly nice Norah Fremont and her son Jacob, whom she adopted from China when he was a toddler, unwanted because of a cleft palate, and since repaired. Jacob, with his scar and his blonde mom, gets stared at a lot just as does Terra, but Jacob responds in the opposite way from Terra: he sports an attention-getting Goth look, and stares right back with a big smile at those who gawk at him.

Unlike most books about teens, while this book does have a romance, and even a triangle of sorts, the focus is on the main protagonist and her relationship with herself, and with her parents, both of whom in different ways affect how Terra feels about herself. At the beginning of the story, Terra sees her mother from her father’s eyes, as a cringing subservient woman who eats too much, and kowtows excessively to her husband’s vicious moods. Yet, in spite of her contempt (albeit mixed with compassion), Terra feels she must stay around and protect her mother, unlike her two older brothers, who moved as far away as they could as soon as they could.

One of Terra’s brothers, Merc, is now in China, and after a disastrous attempt at a visit from him during Thanksgiving, he sends Terra and their mom a ticket to come visit him. They can’t imagine going, until Norah says she and Jacob will go with them; Norah has always meant to visit Jacob’s orphanage to try to track down his birth mother.

The journey is life-changing for all of them, as they all learn lessons about love and beauty and what really matters in life.

Discussion: This remarkable story grows on you after you have finished and you find you are still thinking about it. It was hard to read because of the horrific abusiveness of the father, but this made the family’s struggles against his influence all the more poignant and significant. And although it has an ending that is hopeful for some of the characters, it is realistic enough not to be totally positive in every way for everyone. Nevertheless, enough good develops to make you want to cheer for the advances, and to bring out the kleenex. show less

Loved this book. Felt the author did a great job depicting the protagonist and her family. Terra is a high school senior, hoping to go to art school, with an overweight mother, a verbally abusive father, and two absent brothers. She works toward being perfect to cover her obvious flaw (a large port wine birthmark which covers one of her cheeks) and anything else her father or friends could find fault with. She and her mother are returning from one more attempt to find treatment to fix her face when she almost runs into a young man, Jacob, who himself is scarred, not only with a repaired cleft lip, but with the fact that he was adopted from China (when mostly girls are adopted) and lives with a blonde-haired blue-eyed mother, so always show more stands out as something different. He manages to live with his difference, taking on those who stare at him by staring back and feeling comfortable in his own skin, and encourages Terra to find the same abilities within herself. Terra and her mom take a trip with Jake and his mother to China, and discover their so much beyond China and its culture, including their own courage to deal with their home situation. Their friendship, which grows into love, progresses sweetly, naturally, with such honesty.

Other LT reviewers have called Terra a control freak, a nickname Jake gives her, which is true, but her controlling nature comes from years of abuse from her father (both toward her, and her brothers and mother) -- people control in the hope that they'll be able to make things perfect so the abuser won't have any reason to throw words or fists at them, a losing battle for sure. Terra's mother's reaction makes sense as well, using food to insulate herself from this man's anger and epithets.

The metaphors in this book are great -- maps to finding oneself, collages to show that perfection isn't just magazine model beauty, China as a country of modernity and intense poverty. The end of the book gets a little too preachy and repetitive, but comes to a great conclusion. Great high school read! show less

I'm sad this book didn't win any YA awards. It didn't even make BBYA, when to my mind it's definitely one of the best books to come out last year.

This book is awesome. It has so many great elements in it, but if I tried to list them all it'd sound like a strange book. Suffice it to say that it'll make you cringe, cry, and cheer, possibly in that order but more likely each one more than once.

I particularly admire this book's painfully accurate depiction of emotional abuse. Physical abuse is something almost everyone understands, but emotional abuse is harder to define, and this book lays it all out there. What emotional abuse can do to families is no less devastating than the physical kind. I'm grateful to Justina Chen Headley for show more showing that. show less

A beautiful and heartwarming book that skillfully navigates all the facets of a great novel, leaving you touched, inspired, and satisfied.

Terra wants more than anything to get away; away from her small town, away from her controlling father and his constant barbed comments, away from her cringing mother who so quietly endures his abuse, and away from the people who stare at the port-wine birthmark that mars her otherwise flawless face.

But then Terra almost runs over Jacob, and her whole life changes. Jacob, the honest, level-headed, unjudging Goth guy who is definitely far from her type, but ends changing everything anyway.

Because somehow, with the steady and unobtrusive guidance of Jacob, Terra finds her life, which has been so much show more about control, diffusion, and wishful thinking, could really be so much more.

From small towns in the northwest all the way to China, Terra will allow herself to slowly grow away from the person she always has been, defined by her birthmark, into someone who sees the beginnings of True Beauty in everything around her, including herself.

Everything about this book flows beautifully. Terra, Jacob, and even minor characters like her mother, father, brothers, friends, and Jacob's family are fully realized. Terra's life, emotions, and the plot are woven meaningfully and powerfully together, with tiny details playing big roles, and deep conversations mixed amid realistic fun and heartache. The parts in China were some of my favorites, because they were treated so honestly and yet so lovingly by the author. There are so many themes and lessons, and yet they all seem to come down to one simple conclusion: Don't be afraid to seek the truth and the beauty in everything.

Fantastically done novel, definitely one for the favorites collection. show less

It would be easy to call Justina Chen Headley's North Of Beautiful a gorgeously written, moving young adult novel -- and trust me, it absolutely is. But it's also so much more than that.

Sixteen-year-old Terra Cooper is an artist, student, daughter, girlfriend -- and a young woman with a port-wine stain splashed across her cheek. Her life has been defined by her birthmark, which she takes great pains to cover with makeup every morning. That "secret," most tender part of herself is exposed only around her mother Lois and Grant, her father. After some controversy, Grant Cooper's lifelong obsession with maps has given way to a new subject of malevolence: his wife. Terra and her mother live in constant fear of Grant's mercurial moods and show more quiet, seething disdain, while Terra's two older brothers have flown as far away from their disjointed family as they can. Terra protects herself emotionally with art and physically with Erik; Lois buries herself in the comfort of food.

But everything changes when she meets Jacob, a Goth teen accustomed to standing out. While Terra attempts to cover her birthmark, Jacob embraces what he could never hide: his heritage. As the Chinese-American son of Norah, his blonde, white mother and older brother to a white-blond child, Jacob couldn't bury himself away if he tried. So he jumps to the other end of the spectrum -- smile yourself and put others ill at ease. Jacob's father's impending remarriage to a woman closer to Jacob's age has put a splinter into Norah's carefully-concocted existence. A chance meeting between Terra, Lois, Norah and Jacob points them all in a totally new direction.

It's hard to describe exactly what made this book feel like magic dust slipping through my fingers -- the strong characterization? Potent emotion? Excellent storytelling? Gut-wrenching dialogue? The gentle, sweeping but very effective romance? Lush scenery? I'm not sure, but as the story begins to take flight and Lois and Terra embark on an adventure neither could never imagine taking, I could literally feel my heart expanding. Chen made me feel as though I were walking right alongside them, cheering them on as they pulled further and further away from Grant's tentacles.

And never before have I read a novel -- and a long novel! -- that carried a metaphor so seamlessly through every paragraph. Mapmaking, a compass, a cartouche, geocaching, collages, the very map itself -- Chen is a master. When I realized the importance maps would play in the story, instinctively I waited for it all to get redundant . . . but it never did. Maps are the story's anchor, the not-so-subtle -- but fantastic -- way of guiding us through the novel. And in the end, Terra's face itself is a map, too.

I could keep talking about this book for another ten posts, but I'm sure you have lunch to eat, work to do and family to enjoy. So I'll leave you with this: read North Of Beautiful. I cried and desperately didn't want it to end -- and found myself wondering what the characters were up to days after I finished the book. That's my kind of story!

(To read my full review, please visit write meg!) show less

Wow, this book truly blew me away, however that only happened in the later half of the book. I started reading this book way back in January, however I was so frustrated with many of the characters that i stopped reading. Now i'm glad I picked it up for my readathon and finished it.
This story speaks to the millions of women who feel insecure about themselves, who feel that they are "never good enough" and only want to gain the superficial beauty the media has been feeding down our throats these days. It also speaks to the women who have been always put down by a supposed loved one, who have been verbally abused and made fun of and made to believe that they are nothing and never will be anything or achieve anything great. As you can see show more this story touched my heart in a way other books didn't. I am a huge feminist and coming from a region where they aren't big on women's rights, you might see how this book affected me.
At first I was frustrated with Terra for never sticking up for herself and also for her mom for silently taking such verbal abuse and belittling from her supposed husband. It also frustrated me that Terra's two older brothers couldn't leave the house fast enough and were always on the sidelines watching, and never actually stopping their father, who has become more as a figure for everything they hated about their lives than an actual father.
When Terra and her mom met Jacob and his mom, their journey for the acceptance they always wanted and the realization that this all comes within themselves began. Terra was the fighter between the two. Her mom always stood behind her, as if the roles were reversed. Through this journey, which brought them all the way to China, Terra came to realize the true meaning of beauty and her mom saw herself as a person that is worthy to be loved, and accepted for who she is.
This book had me thinking so much, days after I finished it, I wished that I could become as strong as Terra was in the end. I wished that there is a way to reach out to women stuck in these situations, and for people to accept themselves and love themselves, because every single person is beautiful, you just need to look for the true beauty to see it. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to read a book with a deep message. However there is a romance element in this book, and while i crave for those in books in general, all i wanted to read about here is the journey of these two women, and where it would take them.

5/5 stars show less