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‘Hi, This Is Oprah Winfrey. I Read Your Novel and Loved It So Much.’

Ann Napolitano toiled in obscurity for years. Novels went unpublished; agents turned her down. She found recognition with “Dear Edward.” Then came the call: “Hello Beautiful” was the 100th pick for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.

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Maybe it was fate, maybe it was the meddling of a higher power with a wicked sense of humor. Either way, Ann Napolitano was taking out the garbage when Oprah Winfrey called to tell her that her novel, “ Hello Beautiful ,” is the 100th selection for what is arguably the most influential book club in the world.

Napolitano was so afraid of losing the connection that she stood stock-still in the tiny vestibule of her Park Slope apartment building, clutching her bag of trash, for the duration of the 27-minute call.

To be clear, we’re talking about Oprah’s Book Club — the O.G. reading group , trusty launching pad to the best-seller list and sourdough starter for dozens of iterations, celebrity sponsored and otherwise. Yes, Booktok is nipping at Winfrey’s heels, especially where young readers are concerned, but her endorsement is still a golden ticket.

In the 26 years since Oprah’s Book Club announced “ The Deep End of the Ocean ” as its inaugural pick, the literary world has adjusted to the internet, electronic readers, smartphones and social media. Imprints closed, publishing houses consolidated, bookstores sprouted coffee shops and stopped selling CDs — and, through it all, the club established itself as a force, burnishing the careers of Wally Lamb, Cheryl Strayed, Lalita Tademy, Uwem Akpan, Isabel Wilkerson and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to name a few.

Its machinations are still shrouded in mystery. Boxes of anointed books arrive at stores the day before a title’s publication date, to reduce the risk that customers will catch a glimpse of the club’s signature seal on a cover. Authors, agents and publishers are asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.

“Hello Beautiful,” Napolitano’s fourth novel, came out Tuesday from The Dial Press and Winfrey announced it as her 100th book club selection on “CBS Mornings.” Only now, almost five months after Napolitano’s conversation with Winfrey, can the author share the news with her sons, who are 13 and 15.

So how did “Hello Beautiful” land on Winfrey’s radar? And what was it like for Napolitano to get the nod? The short answers are simple and obvious (It’s a great book! She was thrilled!), but the expanded versions prove the equalizing power of a good story.

Sitting in front of a lush Hawaii hillside that looked like a fake Zoom background but definitely wasn’t, Winfrey talked about the challenge of finding her 100th pick. The symbolic weight of it was on her mind. She wanted to find a book that would engage “every different sector of the population,” one she could recommend from an “authentically enthusiastic space.”

“I went through many, many, many books, reading two and three at a time,” Winfrey said, projecting her familiar voice over the sound of rowdy bird song.

None of the candidates had the universal appeal Winfrey was looking for.

The vast majority of prospective titles go through a vetting process after publishers and agents present them to the book club, but “Hello Beautiful” took an unusual path. Winfrey’s friend, Richard Lovett, co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency, mentioned that Michelle Weiner, the co-head of CAA’s books department, had a novel she thought Winfrey would be interested in.

“Every time somebody suggests that, it’s never true. It’s never something I actually want to read,” Winfrey said. “I was like, OK, send it to me.”

She devoured “Hello Beautiful” on a rainy day in front of her fireplace, curled up with a blanket and her dog. She said, “I was like 30 pages in and said, OK, this is the book. You cannot read it without being opened. It just opens you in ways you didn’t know were closed.”

The novel follows four sisters — Julia, Sylvie, Cecilia and Emeline Padavano — through decades of love, loss and (major) secret keeping. One falls in love with another’s ex-husband and the fallout is as complicated as you’d expect; somehow Napolitano persuades you to leave judgment at the door. The prevailing message is about the indomitability of family.

“Not since Jo and Meg and Amy and Beth have we seen sisters like this, with this kind of connection, and written so vividly that you feel like you’re in that home,” Winfrey said. “You’re experiencing life with them. I am telling you, the ending? I mourned . What an extraordinary writer Ann is.”

The iconic talk show host isn’t your average bookworm, but when she starts talking about what it’s like to fall in love with a novel —“Something starts whispering to me,” Winfrey said, “and I want to know more and I want to know more and I want to know more” — it’s hard to tell the difference.

“What I’m always trying to do is allow people to be lifted by the story somehow, and to see themselves — the people they know, their life — and come away feeling more connected,” Winfrey said. “Ann is one of those authors who’s able to do that without wearing it on her sleeve, without putting it out there in such a way that you feel preached to.”

Napolitano’s third book, “ Dear Edward ,” was a best seller, a Read With Jenna pick and the basis for an 10-episode Apple TV + series starring Connie Britton . The book has sold nearly 400,000 copies.

But until “Dear Edward” sold in a 10-imprint auction in 2018, Napolitano’s career was rife with rejection and disappointment. She wrote two novels that never sold. Her father was so concerned about her prospects that he paid for a full-day career test that flagged her potential as a park ranger.

Napolitano struggled with depression. After being turned down by 80 agents, she signed with one who, sadly, died a few years later. She juggled a series of jobs — teaching, editing, corporate and educational writing, working as a personal assistant for Sting and Trudie Styler — while carving out short windows of time for her novel in progress. She couldn’t afford child care. At one point, Napolitano and her husband, Dan Wilde, had no health insurance. Her second published book, “A Good Hard Look,” (2011) took seven years to write, and “Dear Edward” (2020) took eight.

“I’ve always had low expectations,” Napolitano said during an interview in a conference room at Random House. “Everything went so slowly or badly that all I wanted was a chance to do it again. I have to keep writing. I wasn’t ever counting on success.”

Getting the call from Winfrey was, she said, “one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me in my life. I felt like I went into full menopause because my whole body system was just adrenalized and it was so crazy.”

Napolitano was both tickled and horrified that, while she was reeling from the news, Winfrey launched into a series of questions about her writing process: “In that moment I was like, This is mean! That Oprah Winfrey thinks she can call you and expect you to have an intelligent conversation with her with no warning!”

She remembered how, at the end of their phone call, Winfrey said, “Writers are my rock stars and you’re a rock star.” Still shaky with disbelief, Napolitano unloaded her trash and walked a block to feed the meter in a two-hour parking lot. It was Oct. 20, 2022, the eve of her 51st birthday, the kind of crisp afternoon that lights Brooklyn like a movie set.

Napolitano’s agent, Julie Barer, and her editor, Whitney Frick, had already heard from Winfrey’s team and were waiting for Napolitano to get the news. “I was running to my kids’ school and Julie texted me and said, ‘She called Ann!’ And I knew exactly what that meant,” said Frick, who is vice president and editor in chief at The Dial Press. “It’s really fun when good things happen for good people.”

Barer, who is a partner at The Book Group, said, “Ann is extremely humble and hardworking. She’s no drama. She has an enormous heart and a tremendous capacity for compassion, and I think she brings that to her writing — about the messiness of relationships, and about forgiveness and empathy. It’s not like she’s Pollyanna; she’s not saying it’s all going to be great. Just that it’s going to be OK, and we’re in it together.”

The three of them celebrated with a three-way chat. Then Napolitano finally went home and told her husband — who never second-guessed her writing career, even during lean times — why it had taken her so long to dispose of the garbage.

“Ann walked in wearing a coat and said, ‘Oprah Winfrey just called me on my phone,’” Wilde recalled in an email. “Her eyes were wide with adrenaline, a contrast from her default steadiness. The first thought that came to mind was ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’”

He’d seen how “Hello Beautiful” had overtaken Napolitano. Writing “Dear Edward,” she’d said, had been like entering a separate world, happily, then leaving when she felt like it. The Padavano sisters took a different approach: they occupied Napolitano, demanding attention, bringing their saints, their coffee and their chaos.

“It was a very intense experience,” Napolitano said. “The story raced out of me. It was like holding onto the fender of a car, being banged across town.”

Napolitano started “Hello Beautiful” in April 2020, the loneliest chapter of the pandemic, a time of fear and isolation. It was also the month her father died.

“We weren’t able to see him when he was dying and we weren’t able to gather, like so many people,” Napolitano said. “I was trying to find connection and love, and I needed that house with those loud sisters. It really did feel like I needed this book.”

Winfrey echoed a version of the same sentiment. “I felt less alone because of books during that period of being isolated,” she said, describing how, “as a girl growing up in Mississippi and Milwaukee, all the times I felt so removed and not valued, it was books — ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,’ in particular — that made me feel that I was connected to the world.”

She went on, “And so, in the beginning was the word. The power of the word to help transform our own emotions and our own belief in what’s possible for us? I don’t think anything transcends that.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis .

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HELLO BEAUTIFUL

by Ann Napolitano ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2023

Napolitano’s characters can break your heart as they work to mend their own.

Who do we deserve to love and be loved by?

Drawn into the orbit of a tightknit family upon falling for Julia, the eldest of the four Padavano sisters, William Waters experiences the kind of family solidarity, affection, and sense of belonging he never had with his own dysfunctional parents. William developed an (initially) effective coping strategy during his lonely childhood and devotes his energies toward succeeding in the only place he feels comfortable: the basketball court. College sweethearts, Julia and William marry and begin a life together directed mostly by Julia’s wishes for stability and status; the plan and relationship are derailed by William’s gradual decline into a crippling depression. Julia and William divorce, and William distances himself from their infant daughter, Alice, too. Relationships between and among William and all of the Padavanos rupture and realign over the ensuing decades as Napolitano spins a saga of familial love, deception, and hope for healing while adeptly highlighting each family member’s unique position in the narrative. Each of the Padavano girls is finely described—there's Julia, who's straightforward and driven; Sylvie, dreamy and romantic; and twins Cecelia (artistic) and Emeline (the sensitive moral compass of the group)—and it is entirely plausible that the girls envision themselves from time to time as the March sisters from Little Women . (Rounding out that parallel is the presence of a dreamy, poetic father and a hardworking, long-suffering mother.) More subtly, the influence of Walt Whitman is felt throughout the book, from epigraph to end, as characters come to terms with their roles in an evolving universe. As in Napolitano’s recent Dear Edward (2020), heartbreaking circumstances shatter the lives of relatable human characters who are unprepared for the task of building a meaningful life.

Pub Date: March 14, 2023

ISBN: 9780593243722

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Dial Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

PERSPECTIVES

BOOK TO SCREEN

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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Ann Napolitano on her new novel 'Hello Beautiful'

Scott Simon

Lennon Sherburne

Estrangement and reconciliation in an Italian-American family: Ann Napolitano's new novel, "Hello Beautiful," is about loving each other just as we are. NPR's Scott Simon talks to her about it.

Copyright © 2023 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Review: Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Editorial note: I received a copy of Hello Beautiful in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is a captivating examination of family, love and forgiveness.

I feel Ann Napolitano is one of the best literary fiction writers out there today. Her novels are so moving, vivid and truly capture the essence of humanity. She writes about extremely tough subject matters in such a delicate but quite impactful way. I’m such a fan of hers, which is one reason why I selected Hello Beautifu l as a must-read book club pick for 2023 .

For instance, if you haven’t read Dear Edward (and the series is now out on Apple TV+), I highly recommend it. I was hesitant at first—reading about the sole survivor of a plane crash seemed really depressing. And it is really sad. But again, it’s handled with care and it’s very moving.

It’s interesting to think that I read Dear Edward exactly three years ago in 2020 as we were dealing with the start of a pandemic. While neither book features a pandemic, both cover broken people, heartbreaking loss and family love. These are the kind of stories that remind me you of what’s important in life.

On the surface, Hello Beautiful is a smaller scale story focusing on a close-knit group of sisters. It’s a homage to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women , yet the story very much stands on its own. There’s a lot of depth and covers a wide range of themes. I see why Oprah selected it for her 100th book club selection. This is one of those novels that is absolutely a perfect fit for book clubs.

What’s the Story About

Hello Beautiful centers around the Padavano family and specifically, on the four sisters: Julia, the go-getter of the family; Sylvie, the bookish dreamer; Cecelia, the free-spirited artist; and Emeline, the compassionate nurturer. The sisters are as close as they can be and always have each other’s backs.

Everything changes when Julia meets William Walters, a shy and broken man with a tragic past. William is immediately taken with Julia’s vibrance and is especially happy to be welcomed into a new family.

However, William’s past eventually resurfaces. And as a result, the sisters’ seemingly unbreakable bond is broken.

Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?

Four Sisters

Little Women is the gold standard for stories about sisters. Sometimes homages to literary classics miss the mark or rely too much on the original source material that they don’t feel authentic.

But in the case of Hello Beautiful , Ann Napolitano pays tribute to the classic while also ensuring the story stands on its own. The sisters within Hello Beautiful are also fans of Little Women and even compare themselves to the sisters of the story, which I thought was a nice touch.

I was so fascinated by the different dynamics of the four sisters, especially that of Julia and Sylvie. Those two characters, along with William, are the main focus of the story. If I have one criticism, it’s that I would have liked a little more from Cecelia and Emeline. While they are in the story, they do take a backseat and I think they could have been developed more.

Everything changes when William comes to the picture. Who would expect such a quiet, unassuming man to have such an impact? But he does.

William’s backstory is quite sad—he was unloved as a child. His parents failed him. They couldn’t get past their own grief of losing William’s older sister. There’s a vivid description of William as a child coughing in a closet so he wouldn’t bother his parents with an illness as he believed it would have reminded them of what they lost.

It’s so sad for a child to have to think like that and feel so alone. I couldn’t get over the cruelty of his parents and it does have such a lasting impact on him. He’s a very complex character. You’ll feel sympathetic but he also makes some choices that are quite cold. And the reason behind is apparent but it doesn’t change the outcome.

Still, William grows quite a bit in the novel and I really liked his character arc overall.

This is one of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. There are certain stories that truly get to you and stay with you for a long time. It’s a beautiful story about family bond and love.

If you’re looking for a well-done literary fiction story, this is the one for you. An ideal book for book clubs as there is a ton to discuss, analyze and even debate about. All the stars for Hello Beautiful .

Check out my book club questions here .

Friday 15th of September 2023

Hello Beautiful should never have been published. The writing is the worst I can ever remember of any book I have ever read. This book would be an excellent example for anyone teaching writing of how not to write. It is all “tell” and no “show” and is so repetitious, I wonder why the author doesn’t realize that saying something once is informative, saying it 90 times is absurd. It is ridiculously predictable and the characters absurdly shallow (although Neapolitan spends a lot of time repetitively “telling” readers just how deep they are. I read this for a book club and I feel cheated of money, time and sanity.

Friday 8th of March 2024

@Jan Hale, I totally agree with you!

Judy Hubbard

Monday 15th of January 2024

I meant for not seeing any depth.

@Ben Morcos, So glad I'm not the only one. I was blaming myself for seeing any depth in it whatsoever.

Monday 23rd of October 2023

@Jan Hale (also @Becky) thank you, exactly, you nailed it. it's shocking to me that anyone didn't find this book unbelievably simple, meant for unsophisticated readers, and just plain bad.

Tuesday 6th of June 2023

I wished the scene where Sylvie kisses William had been more dramatized.

Michele Paynter

Sunday 21st of May 2023

I am absolutely in awe of Ann Napolitano's book, HELLO BEAUTIFUL. I suggested this book recently for my book club choice and I am so glad that I did. Reading this poignant story of a family torn by loss, tragedy, but also of great familial love gave me pause. Between the tears and reflections of my own family - I couldn't put the book down. I'm certain that I will reread this fabulous book as well as recommending it to other book enthusiasts. A tour de force to be sure!

Tuesday 11th of April 2023

I'm confused. I thought this was the worst book I've ever read. It wasn't fluid and left out a lot regarding the parents that raised this group. Both Rose and Williams parents were flat...........why? I had a hard time staying engaged, and felt it fell way short of the raving reviews.

Tuesday 17th of September 2024

@Karen, absolutely agree. My main focus was how they "lived" without a source of secure income. I had a baby in early 1980's, the bill for a normal non-anesthesia delivery was over $5,000. How did they pay it???? Ridiculous book.

@Becky, I felt the same way! Such unrealistic and downright ignorant details throughout. I may be picky, but I was so disappointed on so many levels. Really the author shows her stupidity without researching enough. Simple details like cashing an old check—it is void after six months! A professor having all kinds of clients in Manhattan—maybe an adjunct economist could but just a weirdly unbelievable detail. To top it off, not one single character was fully developed. She would give a glimpse of a seriously mentally or disfunctional person and really never delve into specifics!

Judy Ransom

@Becky, I just finished the book and felt the same way as you. After all the glowing reviews, I wondered what was wrong with me that I could barely finish it. Sort of makes me sad.

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Summary and Reviews of Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

Hello Beautiful

• BookBrowse Review:
• Critics' Consensus:
• Readers' Rating:
• First Published:
• Mar 14, 2023, 400 pages

• Literary Fiction
• Midwest, USA
• 1980s & '90s
• Contemporary
• Parenting & Families
• Adult-YA Crossover Fiction
• Female Friendships
• Strong Women
• Publication Information
• Write a Review
• Buy This Book

About This Book

• Book Club Questions

Book Summary

From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it's as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family's dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William's past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia's carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters' unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most? An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott's timeless classic, Little Women , Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

February 1960–December 1978 For the first six days of William Waters's life, he was not an only child. He had a three-year-old sister, a redhead named Caroline after John F. Kennedy's daughter. There were silent home movies of Caroline in which William's father looked like he was laughing, a sight William never saw again. His father's face looked open, and the tiny redhead, who pulled her dress over her face and ran in giggling circles in one of the movies, was apparently the reason. Caroline developed a fever and a cough while William and his mother were in the hospital after his birth. When they came home, the little girl seemed to be on the mend, but the cough was still bad, and when her parents went into her room to get her one morning, they found her dead in her crib. William's parents never mentioned Caroline while William was growing up. There was one photograph of her on the end table in the living room, which William traveled to occasionally in order to convince ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Who is your favorite character in this book? Who did you most identify with, and why?
• Discuss the rift that occurs between William, Julia, and Sylvie, and the choices each character makes to contribute to that rift. If you were involved in a similar situation, what might you have done?
• How did the ending make you feel? What do you think might happen for William and Alice next?
• Ann Napolitano has said that Hello Beautiful is an homage to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women . Have you read Little Women —and, if so, what traces of Alcott's classic novel of sisterhood do you see in Napolitano's?
• Hello Beautiful is initially narrated from three perspectives: William's, Julia's, and Sylvie's. Why do you think the author chose these ...
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Media Reviews

Reader reviews, bookbrowse review.

Each character has virtues: Sylvie, the bookworm romantic with her head screwed on straight; Julia, the planner obsessed with finding and fixing all flaws; Cecelia, the sentimental artist; and Emeline, the nurturing caregiver. Yet, most importantly, they have major flaws. They run from challenges. They hurt easily and hold grudges. They are emotional, they are thrown into irrational decisions seemingly at a whim. They have egos and tempers. But at the forefront of all the conflict is the desire for forgiveness: to receive it, and to dole it out. That, and the desire for love... continued

(Reviewed by Abby Edgecumbe ).

Write your own review!

Beyond the Book

The therapeutic value of walt whitman's poetry.

Read-Alikes

• Genres & Themes

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Oprah’s pick, ‘Hello Beautiful,’ is a tender tearjerker

It’s easy to see why Ann Napolitano’s novel was chosen: like her previous book, “Dear Edward,” this one chronicles life’s highs and lows with precision

In her piercingly tender new novel, “ Hello Beautiful , ” best-selling author Ann Napolitano catalogues the multitudes of love and hurt that families contain, and lays bare their powers to both damage and heal. If that description echoes the poetry of Walt Whitman, whose work Napolitano quotes in her epigraph, it also reflects her own expansive literary spirit — a bracing yet restorative sensibility that managed to render cathartic the seemingly unbearable pain embedded in her previous book, “ Dear Edward . ” Now being dramatized on Apple TV Plus, that story recounts the physical and psychological recovery of the 12-year-old title character who boards a jetliner with his family and becomes the flight’s sole survivor.

In ‘Dear Edward,’ the world’s most famous orphan finds something to live for

Like its predecessor, “Hello Beautiful” will make you weep buckets because you come to care so deeply about the characters and their fates. At its center is another ailing soul, the emotionally hobbled William Waters. He grows up with no memory of his sister, Caroline, a lovable redhead who died at age 3 when he was a mere 6 days old. Her absence engulfs his early years, her death having left his parents emotionally frozen and unable, or unwilling, to forge even a cursory connection with their remaining child.

Overlooked and neglected at home, William’s only solace becomes his love of basketball. The sole place he feels comfortable is a court with a hoop, and his social contacts are mostly limited to his school teammates, who watch with amazement as he reaches the towering height of 6-foot-7. When the sports scholarship he earns to Northwestern University allows him to leave his lonely home for the Chicago area, his parents bid him farewell, seeming not to care whether they ever see him again.

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He arrives on campus insecure, awkward and lost. He’s as little able to comprehend the inner hollowness and guilt he has struggled with for as long as he can remember as he is to imagine a future beyond the basketball court. For a time, his spot on the varsity team’s starting lineup keeps him afloat. So does a fiancee who tows him along without his realizing that their destinations aren’t necessarily compatible. But by the time a severe knee injury sidelines him, he has already begun to sink. After playing the game he knew by the rules and routines that life had presented him, he finds that he’s drowning. There is no game left for him to play, no purpose in trying to pivot on his wounded knee and search for something else.

Napolitano charts his descent with aching precision. She also puts in place two disparate teams to help him: a stolid group of basketball jocks, captained by Kent and Arash, who become his true brothers; and the quirky Padavano sisters, who grow into his family.

He meets Julia, the oldest sister, in a college history class, and she soon introduces him to her three siblings. At first, he finds them indistinguishable, each sporting the same unruly curly hair, and in person, as in old photos, looking “deeply similar, like they were four different versions of the same person.”

Only on closer acquaintance does William begin to discern their differences. Charming and energetic, Julia is also bossy, controlling and ambitious. Sylvie is younger than Julia by 10 months and is her closest confidante, but she is contrastingly soft-spoken, bookish (she works at the local library to put herself through college) and romantic, dreaming of a perfect soul mate even as she makes out with random boys in the library stacks. The two youngest siblings are decidedly nonidentical twins: Cecilia, a budding artist and mural painter who becomes a single mother at 17, and the nurturing Emeline, who “kept her hands free in order to be helpful or to pick up and soothe a neighborhood child.”

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Over the course of three decades, the siblings will mature and change, and their seemingly solid sisterhood will be repeatedly challenged. Yet they always remain recognizable, their flaws and limits as deeply rooted as their capacity for kindness and compassion. Even so, plot coincidences can pile up along the way, and the Padavanos themselves comment on the soap-opera twists that discomfort and reconfigure their relationships. Countering that, Napolitano incorporates knowledgeable interludes about basketball history and strategy throughout her novel.

Napolitano emphasizes the sisters’ fondness for likening themselves to the four heroines of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women . ” But the siblings put me more in mind of the unconventional families Anne Tyler often portrays in her novels. Like Tyler’s characters, who can sometimes hardly bear to go beyond the comfort zone of their Baltimore neighborhood, the Padavanos stay mostly in Pilsen, their beloved working-class corner of Chicago. Both novelists also share a fondness for oddball details, such as mother Rose Padavano’s idiosyncratic gardening gear, which consists of a baseball catcher’s uniform and a flamboyant sombrero. Whitman’s encompassing vision of life and death also wafts through the novel, courtesy of favorite lines quoted by Rose’s ne’er-do-well husband, Charlie.

But Napolitano’s voice is her own. Like her deeply felt characters, she compels us to contemplate the complex tapestry of family love that can, despite grief and loss, still knit us together. She helps us see ourselves — and each other — whole.

Diane Cole is the author of the memoir “ After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges .”

Hello Beautiful

By Ann Napolitano

Dial. 400 pp. $28

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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, hello beautiful.

The New York Times bestselling author of DEAR EDWARD returns with HELLO BEAUTIFUL. This triumphant, emotionally resonant story is about the transformative power of love, and the beauty and growth that come with meeting others as we are while accepting them the same way.

The Padavano girls --- Julia, Sylvie, and twins Cecelia and Emeline --- have long considered themselves Italian American versions of Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. They are woven into the fabric of each other’s lives, and they are so close that they have been able to identify, champion and celebrate the strongest traits of one another and use them to uplift the entire group. So when eldest sister Julia --- the spitting image of her driven, focused and critical mother, Rose --- finds a quiet, methodical and handsome man to settle down with in college, the girls are thrilled. As the first one of them to fall in love and add to their family unit, Julia gives the others hope in the promise that all will work out as they have always dreamed. Not only has she softened around the edges, she seems to have broken the curse of her own mother’s marriage to a pleasant and loving, but feckless and irresponsible man.

"HELLO BEAUTIFUL is a sweeping, perceptive and beautifully rendered family saga that could only be achieved by an author at the height of her literary powers.... Book clubs will no doubt find much to reflect on, discuss and deepen their connections with in this generous, healing novel."

Julia’s romance may not be the stuff of classics, but in William Waters she has found her ideal complement. A quiet but smart man with no serious ambitions (though he could do anything if he sets his mind to it), William is the perfect outlet for Julia’s need for control and ability to problem-solve. Within moments of meeting him, she has their wedding, careers, promotions and old age planned and sorted for them. Accommodating, polite William, who still cannot believe his luck in catching the eye of a gorgeous, brilliant girl, is more than happy to follow her lead. Until his own past rears its ugly head.

As a child, William lived for exactly six days as a younger brother until his three-year-old sister, Caroline, died suddenly in her crib. With his birth seeming to announce the painful end to his parents’ joy, William is left neglected and alone. His mother and father fed, clothed and supported him, but he never knew love or affection as a child --- at least not until he found basketball. Taking comfort in his ability to practice alone, William soon discovered a real talent and joined his school’s team, finding camaraderie and community in the sport but also a purpose. This necessary but unfulfilling coping mechanism guided him through college applications and acceptances. When he shook his father’s hand before leaving for college, he knew he would never see his dysfunctional folks again. Fortunately, he found a new family in Julia and her boisterous, loving home full of whimsical, serious and artistic girls, not to mention her parents, who quickly took him in as one of their own.

For the first quarter of HELLO BEAUTIFUL, Julia and William’s romance takes center stage. All seems perfect, almost alarmingly so. Were this novel written by a less accomplished author, their story alone might be enough. But this is an Ann Napolitano production, and therefore the narrative is so much richer and more complex. When Cecelia announces that she is pregnant at 17 and Julia quickly forces William to impregnate her as well, the births of their daughters do the same thing that William’s birth did for his family: they cause the Padavanos to implode. And when tragedy strikes them in a devastating, shocking blow, the entire clan unravels. Each is left to contemplate what role they really play in the family…and who they are alone, without the others to define them.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL is a sweeping, perceptive and beautifully rendered family saga that could only be achieved by an author at the height of her literary powers. At first glance an homage to LITTLE WOMEN, the book breathes new life into the classic by writing the sisters as individual, separate women: flawed, beautiful, demanding, loving and full of life. Each is wonderfully described, with Napolitano first employing stereotypes --- the bossy one, the bookish one, the artsy one, the loving one --- and then building strong, finely crafted and expertly nuanced personalities on these foundations.

But more than creating these vivid, relatable characters, Napolitano takes great care --- never wasting or misusing a word --- to examine their unique positions within the family and their own interpersonal dynamics. She often lays out a scene from one perspective and then goes back only a few hours or so from the point of view of another to analyze all of the emotions, pulls and draws, and painful decisions that go into every encounter: marriage, childbirth, sibling arguments, love, betrayal and coming of age. As the girls --- and William, my favorite character in perhaps all of Napolitano’s works --- transform and grow, Napolitano is constantly delivering uplifting, transcendent observations on life, love and what makes every encounter meaningful. The result is so beautiful that it is almost impossible to describe, an instant classic that will find a home with any reader.

An immersive work of fiction that is woven through with transformative, powerful grief, HELLO BEAUTIFUL is a soaring portrait of love. Perfect for readers of ASK AGAIN, YES, THE DEARLY BELOVED and THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD, it is sure to make many of this year’s “Best Of” lists. Book clubs will no doubt find much to reflect on, discuss and deepen their connections with in this generous, healing novel.

Reviewed by Rebecca Munro on March 17, 2023

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

• Publication Date: November 19, 2024
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
• ISBN-10: 0593243757
• ISBN-13: 9780593243756