sol2070@velhaestante.com.br reviewed The beauty by Aliya Whiteley
Unforgettable
5.0 stars
( em português: sol2070.in/2026/10/the-beauty-aliya-whiteley )
The Beauty (2014), by Aliya Whiteley, has just one problem: it ends quickly. It's a novella with about 100 pages (this edition brings together three other short stories).
Despite being relatively recent, it has already acquired a cult following in the post-apocalyptic, ecological horror or weird genres. I understood why. It's been a while since I read something so striking and original.
In a future where only small decentralized communes remain in natural areas, Nate is the storyteller of a group. This is the last surviving narrative form of engaging people.
In addition to an unspecified distant cataclysm that thus reduced societies, there came more recently a natural plague that killed all women. Thus, the male group waits resignedly for the gradual human extinction, listening to the stories about the women who existed and the oldest world that died.
A …
( em português: sol2070.in/2026/10/the-beauty-aliya-whiteley )
The Beauty (2014), by Aliya Whiteley, has just one problem: it ends quickly. It's a novella with about 100 pages (this edition brings together three other short stories).
Despite being relatively recent, it has already acquired a cult following in the post-apocalyptic, ecological horror or weird genres. I understood why. It's been a while since I read something so striking and original.
In a future where only small decentralized communes remain in natural areas, Nate is the storyteller of a group. This is the last surviving narrative form of engaging people.
In addition to an unspecified distant cataclysm that thus reduced societies, there came more recently a natural plague that killed all women. Thus, the male group waits resignedly for the gradual human extinction, listening to the stories about the women who existed and the oldest world that died.
A new phenomenon then emerges, both threatening and overwhelming, which redefines what it means to be human or even life, called "The Beauty". One of the consequences is that men start to become women.
Written with an unusual lyricism for this type of narrative, the novel deals a lot with gender and sex, and how the stories we tell shape culture and the sense of purpose.
There is horror, yes, but it is in the new weird subgenre, not scare and fear. It is more corporeal and ontological — linked to awe at that which defies everything we knew. The way sex and motherhood enter the story is disturbingly unforgettable.
I didn't get to read the other stories (I didn't even know that edition was a collection). I will read.