Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

Natural Beauty is Huang’s first novel and this body horror is a banger of a start.

The first person narrator, daughter of Chinese immigrants who fled the Cultural Revolution, was once a promising pianist but a traumatic family event left her psychologically unable to play. While working as a dishwasher, a woman who saw her play invites her to come to a high end beauty and wellness clinic named Holistic. There she is offered a job. Working at HolistiK isn’t just a job, it’s a commitment to a way of life. The employees use the products  and are given regular tune-ups. The narrator is told “We don’t sell products. We’re selling a lifestyle. Desire.The possibility for them to become us.”

The exotic products and treatments are an exaggerated parody of what you can find celebrities promoting. For example, one treatment involves remora eels and crabs. Even as the narrator finds herself drawn deeper into the Holistic culture, she finds that the products and treatments she receives are having an effect. They aren’t merely cosmetic, skin deep as it were, but are gradually altering her body.

The narrator is recruited into a special program which deepens the mystery of what Holistik really is and is the start of the full on body horror she experiences in the second part of the book. The horror Huang portrays is nicely done and leaves the reader both repulsed feeling sympathy for those who succumbed to the lure of finding beauty.

Natural beauty touches upon self-worth, race and identity, and consumerism where Holistik creates a demand for their products and treatments with the employees serving as living advertisements to clients who desire the “natural” beauty they see. The more outlandish the treatment the more people with the means will embrace it.

I hope to read more from this author.