With We All Love the Beautiful Girls, Proulx...moves firmly into John Cheever territory, exploring with a keen eye and incisive prose the suburbs of quiet desperation, peeling back facades to reveal the desperation and violence that lurk just below the surface. When that violence comes to a head, the results are as devastating as they are unexpected. Building out of the family drama, the novel serves as a powerful examination of race and class, effective because it’s so personal. Proulx isn’t working with sweeping indictments or societal commentary, but weaving the commentary through unexamined privilege and world-view. It’s striking because it’s not a conversation we’re used to having ... As one reads We All Love the Beautiful Girls, impressions of the characters will shift and change, a verisimilitude that is the result of careful attention and unflinching honesty.
What compelled me the most was Mia's struggle to parent a damaged boy who was almost a man ... children pass the point of wanting to be held by their mothers very quickly; there is a need to find ways to mother that don't involve the easiness of touch. This novel taught me that this will take work but isn't impossible. There is also a searing message here about the power imbalance that can happen in male/female relationships and the danger this can pose for everyone ... When I finished this novel, I wanted to tell everyone I knew to read it. It is one of the best, most important books I've read in a very long time.
Proulx’s novel covers a lot of territory, with several twists and turns, and it is tempting to wish she didn’t try to say quite so much about so many things. Mostly she keeps the balls in the air, but some storylines can feel overdone, especially the misguided machismo from nearly every male character ... That is not to say it is unrealistic, just tiring—which may be the point. The story excels in its depiction of women ... The scenes between Mia and Frankie are the best of the book and offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak moral landscape.
Proulx’s second novel opens an incisive window into the seemingly predictable lives of two upper-middle-class families that slowly unravel over one long year, following two calamitous events ... Proulx deftly delves into the inner psyches of each of her flawed characters, bringing some level of understanding to their otherwise inexplicably bad choices. Her tale of the downward spiral experienced by these two families seems as real as if we were reading it in the newspaper or hearing it on the local news.
Proulx’s domestic tragedy is a slow burn of a novel ... Proulx...never takes the easy road. Instead of writing either pure suspense or feel-good family drama, she maintains a low level of intensity that never feels gratuitous or unrealistic. A solid choice for fans of suspenseful, character-driven fiction.
I came for the title and stayed for the story ... While Proulx writes neither quickly nor frequently, the quality of her work makes her efforts more than worth waiting for. Her latest is a skillfully told tale of cringe-inducing occurrences brought on by impulsive actions and recurring inactions ... We All Love the Beautiful Girls is one of those books that haunts the mind long after the last sentence is read ... It can be forgiven that the novel somewhat loses its way at the end as it flirts with the outer edges of diatribe ... The book does not end tidily or well for everyone (maybe not for anyone), but very few things do in the real world. Neither the story nor its author flinches.
As layers are peeled back...the Slates learn hard truths about chance and intimacy, and how even minor acts of vengeance can metastasize into tragedies that cause irreparable damage. Gorgeously written, Proulx’s narrative offers a fascinating plot and both a searing exploration of the butterfly effect of trauma and the uncanny persistence of love in improbable circumstances.
Proulx’s teens are sympathetically if sharply realistic, but the ugliness of the adult characters’ behavior bludgeons the reader beyond endurance. No one in this world of selfishness, vengefulness, and obsession seems aware what kind of collateral damage their bad choices—whether misguided or malevolent—will have on others.
