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The Beauty
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Average Rating
Published:
Titan 2018
Status:
Checked Out
Description
Nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Saboteur awards, this game-changing story was chosen by Adam Nevill as one of his favourite horror short stories: “What a refreshing gust of tiny spores this novella explodes into, and I inhaled them all with glee”.
Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of the Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women. 
They are the last generation. 
One evening, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women’s bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before… 
Discover the Beauty.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
01/16/2018
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781785655753
ASIN:
B06WV9JTB5
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Aliya Whiteley. (2018). The Beauty. Titan.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Aliya Whiteley. 2018. The Beauty. Titan.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Aliya Whiteley, The Beauty. Titan, 2018.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Aliya Whiteley. The Beauty. Titan, 2018.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
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Shared Digital Collection20

There are 2 holds on this title.

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Grouped Work ID:
9e2988c8-b3f1-30b1-70a0-925001237a61
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Needs Update?:
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 17:44:10
Date Updated:
Jun 12, 2018 17:44:10
Last Metadata Check:
Apr 16, 2024 20:03:21
Last Metadata Change:
Apr 14, 2024 09:21:02
Last Availability Check:
Apr 16, 2024 20:03:24
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Apr 16, 2024 20:03:24
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
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OverDrive Product Record

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      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Whiteley, Aliya
      • bioText: Aliya Whiteley was born in Devon in 1974, and currently lives in Sussex with her husband, daughter and dog. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction and has been published in places such as The Guardian, Interzone, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Black Static, Strange Horizons, and anthologies such as Fox Spirit's European Monsters and Lonely Planet's Better than Fiction I and II. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice, and won the Drabblecast People's Choice Award in 2007. Her novella, The Beauty, was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award and a Sabotage Award, and appeared on the Honors List for the James Tiptree Jr Award.
      • name: Aliya Whiteley
imprint
Titan Books
publishDate
2018-01-16T00:00:00-05:00
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title
The Beauty
fullDescription
Nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Saboteur awards, this game-changing story was chosen by Adam Nevill as one of his favourite horror short stories: “What a refreshing gust of tiny spores this novella explodes into, and I inhaled them all with glee”.
Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of the Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women. 
They are the last generation. 
One evening, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women’s bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before… 
Discover the Beauty.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Kirkus Reviews
      • content: "Teeming with the spirit of feminist speculative trailblazers like Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, Whiteley's original, gut-wrenching tale renders a world that exists somewhere between post-apocalyptic and fable-esque. Her characters are as multidimensional, nuanced, and somber as her writing, which soaks the reader like a hot bath, and the novel's clever premise surprises as it evolves in an unforgettably grotesque yet thematically justified fashion, despite at times feeling slightly didactic. In short, Whiteley lives up to her various accolades (Guardian Short Story Award finalist, Shirley Jackson award nominee, etc.) with her sixth book-length effort, which channels the eerie spirit of Kelly Link and the environmental surrealism of Jeff VanderMeer. A murky delirium of sinuous language and unnerving storytelling that will delight both experienced genre fanatics and literary fiction lovers alike."
      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        September 1, 2017
        Whiteley's latest pits the repression of the patriarchy against the power of the environment.In a brisk 208 pages, Whiteley (The Arrival of Missives, 2016, etc.) spins the tale of Nathan, the resident bard of a post-apocalyptic tribe afflicted by a bacterial disease that has taken the lives of its women. Overwhelmed by the notion that they are the last generation of humans on Earth, the men of the tribe grow despondent. That is, until the women they've lost return, reincarnated as "walking mushrooms" who invert the gender dynamics of the heterosexual relationships the men of the tribe profess to miss so much. As these dynamics become increasingly graphic and extreme, so do the tensions between the men, some of whom view their new lovers as saviors while others consider them captors. Teeming with the spirit of feminist speculative trailblazers like Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, Whiteley's original, gut-wrenching tale renders a world that exists somewhere between post-apocalyptic and fable-esque. Her characters are as multidimensional, nuanced, and somber as her writing, which soaks the reader like a hot bath, and the novel's clever premise surprises as it evolves in an unforgettably grotesque yet thematically justified fashion, despite at times feeling slightly didactic. In short, Whiteley lives up to her various accolades (Guardian Short Story Award finalist, Shirley Jackson award nominee, etc.) with her sixth book-length effort, which channels the eerie spirit of Kelly Link and the environmental surrealism of Jeff VanderMeer. A murky delirium of sinuous language and unnerving storytelling that will delight both experienced genre fanatics and literary fiction lovers alike.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        October 2, 2017
        Whiteley’s solid first book-length volume in the U.S. pairs the title story, published in 2014, with “Peace, Pipe,” a new work. “The Beauty” examines self-isolated men who call their community “the Group.” Their saga is told by Nathan, who continuously reimagines the shaping power of his storytelling role. After an epidemic kills off all women, strange mushrooms grow from their graves, taking on shambling female shapes. Are they medicine? Golems conjured by male mythologizing? Evolution’s next stage? Nathan considers—and the Group resists—each possibility, with catastrophic consequences. In contrast, “Peace, Pipe” features a narrator who’s so isolated that he hallucinates conversations with a pipe in his quarantine chamber. Pipe proves a sympathetic interlocutor for Alex’s history as an interstellar diplomat, whose mistake has caused a socioecological cataclysm still underway on the planet Demeter. Steeped in regret, Alex snatches at an opportunity for one small redemption: the rescue of his planetside friend Thumbs. The question is how much redemption is going to cost Thumbs, his persecutors, Alex, and even Pipe. Of the two stories, “Peace, Pipe” is the more enticing, offering a greater range of emotion and whimsy. The contrasting moods make for a well-constructed dyad that questions the limits of seeing oneself in the other.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        October 1, 2017
        In an unspecified future, a worldwide epidemic has killed off all the women. The Group, a small community of men and boys, wait out their days until they are all dead. Then, shockingly, a discovery is made: creatures who, while they barely resemble women, take the men as their partners, binding with them in a sexual way. Nathan, the story's narrator, calls the creatures the Beauty, a collective name for beings who seem to be individual parts of a greater whole. Soon the Group is faced with some tough choices. Is the idea of the Beauty repugnant? Should melding with them be forbidden? Or have the men found some acceptable respite from the bleakness of their futures? Reading like something Adam Roberts might have written (perhaps in his Land of the Headless mode), this short novel, which was originally published in 2014 by Unsung Stories, is elegantly written, balancing on the line that divides prose from poetry. As a bonus, this book includes a second story from the author: Peace, Pipe, an SF tale about the difficulties of crossing the language barrier between alien species.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

popularity
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shortDescription
Nominated for the Shirley Jackson and Saboteur awards, this game-changing story was chosen by Adam Nevill as one of his favourite horror short stories: “What a refreshing gust of tiny spores this novella explodes into, and I inhaled them all with glee”.
Somewhere away from the cities and towns, in the Valley of the Rocks, a society of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their history recounted by Nate, the storyteller. Requested most often by the group is the tale of the death of all women. 
They are the last generation. 
One evening, Nate brings back new secrets from the woods; peculiar mushrooms are growing from the ground where the women’s bodies lie buried. These are the first signs of a strange and insidious presence unlike anything ever known before… 
Discover the Beauty.
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