Ann Napolitano is very good at effectively structuring a complex story with several viewpoints, and bringing clarity to a couple of themes. She juggles all of this in her most recent novel, and does so successfully. Hello Beautiful is a story about depression, how well-meaning people react to it, and misunderstand how to usefully and appropriately respond. It is a story about family, how siblings help or harm our personal development and choices in life. It is a story about marital relationships, how they succeed, how they fail, and the price paid by children when they do. Napolitano takes on alot in this novel, and accomplishes it while delivering a good story.

Told in an overlapping, shifting focus between various characters’ viewpoints, this is a tricky tool in the wrong hands, but Napolitano uses it to great effect. It moves the action forward, but also supplies the interior of characters’ experience and motivations, what we often in life think of as “what were they thinking!” moments when we see people respond or act in ways we cannot fathom or understand. The story begins with William Waters, a second child of a well-off Boston family, whose first child, Caroline, dies at age three. William has few memories of her, but knows that it changed the family forever. For a child to inexplicably be cut off emotionally, physically, and in most every respect, made to fend for himself alone, would surely lead to deep, profound depression, of a sort that made William feel unlovable, never fitting in with peers, out of step and just not belonging to humanity around him. It was a selfish cruelty on the part of his depressed parents. In college, he meets Julia Padavano, a true force of nature, with spirit and ambition for them both. By latching on to her, William hopes he can find the love he has never known, and that she will supply direction, motivation, and life force for him. Julia, for her part, views William as a kind, talented, considerate man who is moldable, the material of a man she can make a success of, to propel their family to achieve all her goals. We simply know this cannot work, and people will be harmed. The only question is, how gravely, and how recoverably.

Julia is part of the Padavano family, one of four beautiful sisters, a strong-willed mother, and a dreaming, alcoholic father. Each daughter connects more with either the drive and determination of their mother, or the poetic, deep thinking father. While loving and supportive of each other without fail, the women are at odds when they feel one has gone off the rails. This novel is doubtless an homage to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, referenced throughout the novel. While Julia does not save William, the Padavano family as a whole do, as he finds support and love here he has never known, enough to help him pull himself up, survive and thrive. Love is indeed our oxygen, benefitting both giver and recipient, as demonstrated in this novel in many ways.

This is a wonderful summer read, during these waning, hot days. Be sure to pack it in your beach bag. Book clubs, you will love this. Highly recommended.