O Beautiful by Jung Yun is a thought-provoking exploration of the complexities of identity, family, and the American Dream. Set against the backdrop of a small town in Ohio, Yun's novel delves into the lives of the Park family as they grapple with issues of race, class, and belonging.

One of the novel's strengths lies in its nuanced portrayal of the immigrant experience and the tensions that arise between generations. Yun's characters are richly drawn and their struggles feel authentic, inviting readers to empathize with their joys and sorrows.

The prose in the novel is elegant and evocative, transporting readers to the heart of the Park family's world with vivid detail. Yun's exploration of themes such as identity and cultural assimilation is both timely and thought-provoking, offering readers plenty of material for reflection. Well-done!

This book was hard to get through. It was dark and sad and just didn't hold my attention. Jung Yun wrote a beautifully woven story about life after the oil boom, it just wasn't my cup of tea. I'm sure lots of people who like to read lovely, slow, lyrical books would enjoy it though!

Elinor Hansen is the daughter of a white Air Force vet dad and a Korean mom. She spent time in North Dakota as a child. Now she returns leaving a successful modeling career behind in favor of writing an article about the oil boom. Elinor is faced with many challenges as she revisits her childhood home. Yum covers racism and sexism among others. This was well-written and thought provoking. I thank Net Galley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Author Jung Yun sets her story in North Dakota, the same state she grew up in. I appreciate that much of her story has come from life experience living in the Midwest. Yun tells the story of Elinor Hanson, a writer who is given the opportunity to tell the story of the Bakken, North Dakota oil boom, the same town she grew up in. Her depictions of Bakken reminded me in some way of Upton Sinclair's "Main Street", but Yun's "O Beautiful" is a more modern and powerful voice than Sinclair. Yun's Elinor deals with racism, family strife, environmentalism, and her conflicting love and hate for her small hometown.
Highly recommended.

With spare and graceful prose, O Beautiful presents an immersive portrait of a community rife with tensions and competing interests, and one woman’s attempts to reconcile her anger with her love of a beautiful, but troubled land. From the critically acclaimed author of Shelter, an unflinching portrayal of a woman trying to come to terms with the ghosts of her past and the tortured realities of a deeply divided America.

I was excited to read this because I loved Shelter and I know she’s a great writer. I liked this one, and the feminism themes resonated, but it felt at times like it was trying to do too much and it fell flat for me in certain places.

A modern day Grapes of Wrath. Engaging and thoughtful, I enjoyed reading this book. At times, it felt a little book reporty given that it’s about a news writer and her story, but it didn’t take away too much from the flow. Thanks to netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is my kind of book for sure. I loved the intersectionality of all of the themes in it. It was really well-written and the abuse storyline really resonated with me as a survivor of abuse. I felt like I was reading about my own self at certain points which is something rare.

masterclass in storytelling and in developing a prickly, challenging, complex main character who, by turns, is entirely worthy of loathing AND compassion. Which is precisely the entire point of the book and how it all comes together at the end is brilliant.

Elinor has a major assignment from a former teacher/mentor in New York: she's to go to North Dakota, where oil has brought about a boom in the region, and write a story. She was born and raised in ND, so this is at once a homecoming and a home-going story, where in she wrestles with living as a biracial Chinese child in ND, how her mother's fleeing her father impacted her, and the ways in which her sister's decision to stay in their small town and raise a family both connects with and contrasts her experiences leaving to start a career in modeling, then returning to college in her 40s to do journalism.

This is a book about misogyny and racism, but it's also a book about feminism and what it means to be a true ally to someone. What Elinor thinks her story will be, one guided by the insight and notes of her white mentor, turns into something completely different as she unravels a story of a missing white girl. This story made the oil town take on a whole new Feel, though as Elinor learns when she visits one of the Native reservations nearby, it's just another missing white girl story . . . and the stories of those who've gone missing for other reasons, whose lives have been desecrated because of their skin color or heritage, maybe don't have the opportunity to disappear the same way white women can.

Because it's also possible the missing woman WANTED to go missing.

Smart, engaging, and deeply character driven, this book reminded me what a powerhouse of a writer Yun is. She wraps so much into this otherwise tightly-written story, offering nuanced characterizations for even what seem to be the most throwaway secondary players in the story

I wish this book were more enjoyable, but it often careened into questionable territory, overemphasizing the beauty of the narrator, failing to really dive into the racial politics in a way that is thought provoking.

I put off reading this book for a while, and now regret that choice. <i>O Beautiful</i> is a beautiful introduction to a topic I knew nothing about. While I'd heard about fracking in the U.S., I had no idea about the boom culture behind it and how it can impact these small towns that are wholly unprepared to have hundreds if not thousands of people looking to strike it rich descend upon them.

Elinor, a forty-something former model turned fledgling journalist, is our introduction into this world. Raised in North Dakota with a white military father and a Korean stay-at-home mom (who later flees her marriage and children), Elinor returns to the area at the behest of her former professor/lover who asks Elinor to take over his story. Elinor is trying to gain control of her own chaotic life while trying to figure out what the story of Bakken, North Dakota is.

This is not a feel good story. There's not a single stereotypically "good" character in the novel. Elinor is a hard character to like, which is part of what makes the story so engaging. She makes terrible choices, she's cold and even at 42 cannot get her life together. However, it's easy to get swept up in <i>O Beautiful</i> because Yun is such a compelling writer.

I see lots of reviews from people who are annoyed that all of the men are terrible in this book. Yun forces us to acknowledge what's happening in these town--especially the ugly parts--the racism, the roaming groups of untethered men who are living almost like feral animals while trying to strike it rich. To want the author to create heroes so we feel better seems like an unfair burden to place on the story.

Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

This book is an interesting snapshot in the current state of the American dream. It combines elements of current events in a great way: everything from high interest point topic of gas and oil to shades of MeToo in terms of both sexual harassment and misogyny against women, from immigration and continuous racism faced by first generation immigrants and their families, to the invisibility of recognition of Native American experiences in relation to all of these topics and especially the continuous lack of attention to the missing Native women.

I thought the book did a great job intertwining each of the topics above without having one take over the other and it made me want to keep reading the book past it's inevitable last page. Sequel, anyone?

This is a beautiful, sparse novel with an unsettling portrait of the underbelly of a North Dakota town in the shadow of an oil boom. Elinor is in her forties, an ex-model American-Korean woman, beginning a second career as a writer. She is given the story, and the reason to return home, by her ex-lover professor, and she begins to find her own way and new direction with this story. In a town of SO many men and so much toxic masculinity, this becomes a story of so many women. So many complex female characters, frustrating and flawed, brought to life as Elinor grapples with the article, her family history and past and present trauma. With themes of race, sexism, abuse, greed and environmental issues, this book has a lot to say about the so-called American dream. I just wish the ending hadn’t felt so rushed. 4 but could’ve been 5 stars.

Returning to her home state of North Dakota to report on life in a small town overtaken by an oil boom, Elinor Hanson encounters everything that is wrong with the USA. Misogyny, racism, capitalism run amok, environmental destruction, indigenous suffering, sharp division, hate, helplessness - Yun lays it all bare. Lots of pain, little redemption. O Beautiful was well-written but in attempting to do too much, it both falls a little flat and pokes at every raw nerve of everyone who is questioning just where the United States is heading in this age and day.

Jung Yun as written a searing and deeply captivating novel about the intersection of race, gender, violence and freedom set in modern day North Dakota. I found this affecting novel to be luminous and moving and shocking and true. Brava.

Although slow at times, this was an excellent example of a character driven story. Beautifully written and paced. I will be recommending for book clubs!

I was drawn by the cover of this book and its title. I went in almost blindly. I was in for a treat and I enjoyed it from beginning to end!
I loved Elinor, her courage, her perseverance, her empathy, her observation skills and her capacity to reflect. All great skills for the writer she shouldn’t doubt she is.
I hope to read a sequel soon. In the meantime, I will follow this author and read her first fiction ‘’Shelter’’.
Very well done, Jung Yun and thank you!

(Read thanks to NetGalley)

Elinor Hanson is trying to reinvent herself. After years of working as a successful "Asian model," she has finished graduate school and is determined to be a successful writer. When her mentor offers her the chance to take over a story about an oil boom in the area where she grew up, Elinor cautiously accepts the assignment. As she interviews the men who have traveled to make their fortunes on the oil fields and the small town residents whose lives have been upended by the oil boom, she realizes anew that she has always been seen as an outsider.
Elinor grew up in North Dakota as the daughter of a white US airman and the Korean woman he brought home after his time overseas. She knows what it is like to feel like an outsider as one of the few non-white students growing up in her North Dakota town, as an Asian woman in a largely white modeling industry, and as an older student in her journalism classes.

O Beautiful is an unflinching look at the things that women, especially women of color, deal with on a daily basis. From the first pages, Elinor is accosted by men who "just want to talk" or "were just trying to be friendly." Jung Yun succeeds in portraying just how oppressive it is to live a life where you are always on your guard, always worried, always looking for the next possible threat. Elinor is often angry and I would say that this book is written with anger, too; there is anger about the way racism and sexism impact our lives, the way giant corporations are destroying the planet for profit, and the widening gap between people who can't make ends meet and those who have more money than they could ever spend.

As the title indicates, this is a story about who belongs in America. Can woman truly feel at home in a society where they need to be on their guard? Can Black or Asian or Latino people find a place to call their own when the people around them see them as threats? O Beautiful is a tightly constructed novel about one woman searching for a place where she will be truly safe and welcome as an Asian American woman.


O Beautiful
By Jung Yun
St. Martin's Press November 2021
320 pages
Read via Netgalley

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of O Beautiful by Jung Yun. In exchange I offer an honest review.
The book is now available for purchase.

Having read and loved Sheltered, Jung Hun’s debut, I was very excited to read her newest novel. I will say, the writing is sharp and biting proving that Yun possess incredible talent and skill. However, I found the story disjointed and difficult to connect to. I disliked the main character, Elinor with visceral emotions and reactions. It wasn’t the right book for me, maybe at another time I might have felt differently.

Following the award-winning release of her debut, SHELTER, Jung Yun returns with O BEAUTIFUL. This incisive and insightful portrait of a small town in the middle of a great upheaval fearlessly probes not only the discontent simmering in small-town America, but also the lie of America’s unified front against deep issues like racism and sexism.

“In Avery, North Dakota, the epicenter of the North American oil boom, one might forget that the rest of the country is still struggling to recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” So begins the article that forty-something ex-model Elinor Hanson is tasked to write for Standard magazine when her former professor and lover, Richard, passes his research off to her while he undergoes surgery. Still living off her model savings and smart investing, Elinor is relatively new to the journalism scene, but Richard convinces her that she is born to write this piece --- the one that is sure to make a name for her and cement her career. As a North Dakotan military brat who can speak to North Dakota before the oil boom, she alone seems uniquely poised to write the before-and-after piece that will break open the idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of a small, historically poor town that has started churning out millionaires seemingly overnight.

As a 5’10” Korean American, Elinor never felt comfortable in North Dakota, particularly in the military housing where she, her mother and her sister stood out a bit too much. As such, she has not visited her home state in over 20 years, so she expects things to look different. But even she is not prepared for the changes, especially in Avery, which she remembers as “just a dot on the map.” Once just a main road in and out and often-closed shops, the traffic has morphed into a caravan of dust-covered trucks and tankers, and it has transformed into a near-city of newly built apartment complexes and housing developments, car dealerships and superstores.

Richard already has done a bulk of the research, leaving Elinor with over a hundred articles about the Dakotas, each written through a different lens --- history, business, geology, environmental studies and crime stats --- along with a schedule of interviews he planned before he had to bow out. With his help and her own familiarity with the area, the article should write itself. Yet, when Elinor arrives at Avery’s Thrifty Inn and begins to explore the area, she finds a wealth of topics that Richard could not even conceive of exploring.

First and foremost, the area’s oil boom has attracted tons of workers, mainly men. Though they come from all walks and areas of life --- white, Black, Latinx, poor, educated, elderly, young --- they share one immediately obvious trait: none of them are lifers in the small town. Right off the bat, it is easy to see why Avery is struggling to accept their new neighbors: a town of 4,000 could never possibly be prepared to welcome thousands of itinerant workers. Now traffic is monstrously bad, everything is under construction, and housing --- or even just lodging --- is at an all-time premium.

But as Elinor, both obviously female and obviously “other” (or “exotic,” as so many men like to remind her), notices, they are even less accepting of the Black and other nonwhite workers, often bashing them as job stealers and criminals. The racist overtones were intensified when a young white woman, Leanne Lowell, disappeared a few years ago. Though town council members assure Elinor that there’s nothing more to Avery’s racism than “a handful of closed-minded folks pointing their fingers at certain kinds of roughnecks,” she knows firsthand the insidious nature of racism, and cannot help but reflect on her childhood as a nonwhite citizen.

As Elinor’s investigative reporting continues, she talks to roughnecks, widows fighting back against oil companies, dancers at gentlemen’s clubs, man camp leaders and everyone in between. But the story that emerges is not one of a town whose livelihood is tied up with the oil business, but rather of the patriarchy’s hold on America, and all of the other -isms nestled under it: racism, sexism and classism. How can proud, sensitive men, many of whom are already down on their luck and feeling forgotten, act civilly in an industry and community that constantly tries to belittle them? And more importantly, how can the women who love, work with and serve them protect themselves when they are pitted against one another and forced to swallow and internalize the misogyny that surrounds and controls them? While Elinor explores these deep, difficult subjects, her own life takes a surprising turn as her professor’s controlling nature starts to bleed beyond his notes and into her reflections on her role as a woman.

O BEAUTIFUL is a novel that transcends genre; it is as propulsive as a mystery, as evocative of time and place as historical fiction, and as breathtakingly timely as contemporary fiction or journalism. In a market saturated with stories of a divided, complex America, this book may be easily overlooked, but Yun’s tender, sparse prose and clear-eyed gaze make her sophomore release something truly special and poignant. She is fearless in her probing of the complexities of gender, race and class, but perhaps most striking is her ability to confront these issues head-on while also weaving them into her narrative so seamlessly that you almost forget that, as eagle-eyed as Elinor’s perspective feels, she too is entrapped in these systemic minefields. And so are you.

Insightful, shrewd, and surprisingly tender and heartfelt, O BEAUTIFUL is a searingly current and necessary addition to every bookshelf and library, and a courageous portrait of a country on the brink of unwinding.