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Published Jan 2018
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An unforgettable, gut-wrenching story of the sacrifices we make to truly love someone - and when loyalty to one's self must prevail over all.
Two sisters - Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister's protector; Lucia, the headstrong, unpredictable one, whose impulses are huge and, often, life changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. But Lucia impetuously plows ahead, marrying a bighearted, older man only to leave him, suddenly, to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant. She moves her new family from the States to Ecuador and back again, but the bitter constant is that she is, in fact, mentally ill. Lucia lives life on a grand scale, until, inevitably, she crashes to earth.
Miranda leaves her own self-contained life in Switzerland to rescue her sister again - but only Lucia can decide whether she wants to be saved. The bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans - but what does it take to break them?
Told in alternating points of view, Everything Here Is Beautiful is, at its heart, the story of a young woman's quest to find fulfillment and a life unconstrained by her illness. But it's also an unforgettable, gut-wrenching story of the sacrifices we make to truly love someone - and when loyalty to one's self must prevail over all.
"Readers will find much to admire and ponder throughout, and Lucy's section reveals Lee as a writer of considerable talent and power." - Publishers Weekly
"An evocative and beautifully written debut." - Kirkus
"First novelist Lee's story of mental illness and its effects on Lucia and those who love her alternates points of view from among various characters. The portrayal of sisterly love and its limits is visceral. A solid choice for general fiction readers." - Library Journal
"The interaction of cultures, with the inevitable misunderstandings that accompany it, forms a vibrant subtheme, and as the novel branches out from New York to Ecuador and then Minnesota, its sense of place deepens." - Booklist
"A tender but unflinching portrayal of the bond between two sisters." - Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
"Stunning and unforgettable... filled with voices that resonate and haunt. An intimately personal tale about family, self, and the risks we take to care for the ones we love." - Ruth Ozeki, New York Times bestselling author of A Tale for the Time Being
"Mira T. Lee deeply understands the human need for belonging, and in her compassionate debut, she presents an aching yet hopeful story of characters striving to belong despite vast impediments, and the emotional costs incurred in this quest for a love-filled life." - Imbolo Mbue, author of the PEN/Faulkner award-winning Behold the Dreamers
"This heart-wrenching, delicately drawn novel is filled with family love, passion, pain and forgiveness. Mira T. Lee spins a story spanning oceans that draws us ever closer to her characters' generous, flawed hearts. Powerful and unforgettable." - Jean Kwok, New York Times bestselling author of Mambo in Chinatown
"This book took my breath away. Lee has an incredible gift for empathy - I found myself rooting for, and caring deeply about, all of characters, even when they couldn't stand each other. I especially commend her nuanced, compassionate depiction of mental illness and how it impacts families. Everything Here Is Beautiful is an insightful, generous celebration of our capacity and complexity as human beings." - Mark Lukach, internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward
This information about Everything Here Is Beautiful was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mira T. Lee's work has been published in numerous quarterlies and reviews, including The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, and Triquarterly. She was awarded an Artist's Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2012, and has twice received special mention for the Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of Stanford University, and currently lives with her husband and two young sons in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is her debut novel.
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