That’s the power of family, awful and wonderful, and this power ripples through the pages of Mira T. Lee’s extraordinary debut novel. If you love anyone at all, this book is going to get you ... The novel covers decades at a swift clip, but it never feels rushed or lightly explored. There’s a lifelike texture to the fast passage of time, each relationship painted with deep, efficient strokes. Lee is a cogent, controlled writer, hitting big themes — immigration, mental illness, romance, family — while avoiding the usual traps of mawkishness and emotional manipulation ... Everything Here Is Beautiful is no fairy tale. It springs from the rich mess of love and pain and humanity, the restlessness of real life that ensures nothing is fixed ever after.
...an astonishing and imaginative chronicle of mental illness and the unbreakable bonds of family ... In shimmering prose, Lee nimbly unfurls a story that slithers like a serpent back and forth through time and across the threshold between what is perceived and what is real, producing a nuanced view of a complex woman and what it means to love her ... There are no easy answers to these questions, and Lee does not pretend otherwise. Instead, she presents us with a sensitive and elusive story of sisterhood and schizophrenia that is brimming with another one of Lucia’s favorite words: saudade, a deep, melancholic longing for a person or state that is absent. This electrifying first novel is wistful, wise and utterly unforgettable.
Too often, the mentally ill are portrayed in literature as evil villains bent upon bringing unspeakable harm to unsuspecting, rational people. Mira T. Lee’s debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, counters that harmful stereotype with her sensitive portrayal of Lucia, a vivacious, intelligent, and creative woman afflicted with an illness about whose diagnosis 'doctors could never agree, whether it was schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or something on the spectrum in between' ... The story sprawls out from there. While Lee’s prose is unfailingly lovely and compelling, the distractions to the main story accumulate. The narrative not only seeks to encompass the devastating effects of mental illness, but also the immigrant experience... With this tender, beautifully written novel, Mira Lee seeks to erase the stigma of mental illness by portraying it as a debilitating malady whose sufferers should be treated with the same dignity and sympathy as any other victim of a chronic illness.
Mira T. Lee’s impressive debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, is a tale of two sisters who, each in her own way, is victim of the same disease. That disease is mental illness, and it forms the yin to the yang of the book’s title because, doubtful though it may sound, Lee’s story is not the heavy lift you might expect it to be ... This is the pattern that frames the story but, fortunately, doesn’t define it, because the relationship between the two sisters has devolved into its own dysfunctional form ... Yes, her book is about the bond between two sisters, as indicated on its cover. But its real achievement goes beyond that relationship and depicts the way mental illness shapes family dynamics no matter how that bond is formed ... Everything Here Is Beautiful finds the sweet spot between the truth and beauty of a disease that can inspire hope in the midst of sadness and frustration.
An expansion of a short story published in the Missouri Review, Mira T. Lee's debut novel, Everything Here Is Beautiful, explores the relationship between two sisters, the eldest committed to protecting her spontaneous, joyful but mentally unstable sibling ... Lee's spotlight illuminates the stress mental illness places on families, the difficulties of navigating the healthcare system – though the United States' proves better than Ecuador's – and the resilience of family, whether formed by blood or by love. Like Miriam Toews's All My Puny Sorrows, Everything Here Is Beautiful is filled with unexpected, fragile moments of beauty.
Sisterly ties take on brilliant nuance in Mira T. Lee’s shattering debut about love, loss, psychosis, and what we owe ourselves and the family we love ... With expert grace and compassion, Lee moves her cast of characters through the years, ending with 10-year-old Esperanza and a soupçon of hope. '[L]ove is everything,' Lucia says, and in this blistering novel about the persistence of bonds despite tragedy, readers can’t help but feel that Lucia just might be right.
To Lee's credit, Lucia, the more compellingly drawn of the two siblings, never seems like a psychological case study. Instead, we get inside her head—perhaps even inside her soul—to grapple with the challenges she face ... The book also exposes the helplessness of family members wishing to fix a fraught situation; the class dimension of health care delivery; and the rampant misinformation surrounding the treatment and diagnosis of illnesses like schizoaffective disorder. Lastly, vivid descriptions of the gentrifying Lower East Side of 1990s New York City, the heavily immigrant towns along the Hudson River, and several communities in Ecuador ground the characters in distinct locations. An evocative and beautifully written debut.
Lee tells the story from several points of view, and the section from Lucy’s perspective is the stand-out: Lucy is funny, observant, and emotionally intelligent. Her descriptions buzz with the unexpected ... The other sections are staid by comparison, and the prose is occasionally marred by awkward, clipped constructions, as well as some distracting overreaches. But Lee handles a sensitive subject with empathy and courage. Readers will find much to admire and ponder throughout, and Lucy’s section reveals Lee as a writer of considerable talent and power.
