Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones is a memoir about her life living with disability, relationships with her family, and motherhood. The author also shares her trips to Italy and Cambodia as part of her journey discovering what beauty really is. Overall, the book is elegantly and beautifully written, and I particularly enjoyed her memories with Chetra in Cambodia - the reflection and interactions with local people with great empathy and emotions. However, there is one thing that makes my reading experience discounted. Quoting different philosophies throughout the book is the major issue - it might be a delight for readers that have knowledge of that, but for me, it is difficult to simply enjoy the reading without interruptions.

The author presents interpretations of beauty through conversations and events on different occasions. Despite the difficulty in understanding some ideas of ancient philosophers, it's truly enjoyable throughout the book. After reading this book, I start to be more conscientious when interacting with people, especially strangers, and also my relationship with people around me. I believe this book would definitely give readers some new perspectives on beauty and life.

4.5/5.0 - truly recommend this book to people into memoirs.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy, and I provide the comment voluntarily.

I’m genuinely unable to think of the perfect way to start this review. I finished the book last night and still feel as though a million thoughts are fluttering around in my brain waiting to be unpacked.

What a beautiful and unflinchingly honest memoir. Nothing I write in this review will hold a candle to the words of Chloé Cooper Jones, you must read them to experience for yourself.

Jones, through her writing, allows us to journey along with her through her days, her struggles, her joys, her interactions, her observations, her inner monologue. We travel with Jones to Italy, Cambodia, and across the U.S., each trip learning something new about her, something new about the place she’s visiting, and perhaps, just maybe, something new about ourselves.

The narrative is non-linear, present day travels juxtapose with memories of her past. I thoroughly enjoyed the philosophical nature of this memoir. Jones is a philosophy professor so it was no surprise that she was at the ready with quotes from the greats and posed question after thoughtful question. Why does society deem some worthy of love and beauty, and others not?

Jones provides example after example of unbelievable callous remarks and examples of near-constant ableism in our society. How privileged I am to read these moments and be shocked, whereas Jones often simply thought, “There it is.” This book can, and will, incite readers to be more thoughtful in their interactions and relationships. It’s powerful enough to make one rethink how they see and empathize with the world. Do yourself a favor and read this book. Easy Beauty deserves to be read by everyone everywhere.

Easy Beauty was published yesterday, April 5th. So I’m a day late and a dollar short on this review, but this wasn’t a memoir I wanted to rush through as it demands and deserves your thoughtful time and attention.

Thank you very much to @avidreaderpress and @netgalley for this ARC review copy!

I just finished this book and immediately reread the last section so struck by the gorgeousness and profound beauty of the author’s writing. This is a memoir that is so FULL of wisdom and relatable feelings: being an adult child reconciling their parents’ choices and who they are - motherhood - being a partner and spouse - and through all of this we yet we get breathtaking insight of the author’s congenital condition which effects her life is innumerable ways. This book is smart and researched and generous. I’m awestruck. Read this with your book club because you’ll want to talk about it. The writing is so beautiful I want to wallpaper my bedroom with the pages. Thank you to Avid Reader Simon and Schuster for the advanced copy. Holy moly was that gorgeous.

This book is a memoir, by Chloe Cooper Jones, telling about her life and all that she has endured, being a person living with a disability. Having a severe malformation of the spine, this impacts all parts of her life, including walking, health problems and more. She always was told that she was not going to be able to do some things, which she always believed. This book is really her coming of age (at an older age) and finding that her limitations are more limitless than she thought they would be.

I really enjoyed most of this book. I felt like this book exemplified how limits are put on people by others not living their life, and how we, as humans, fight to overcome these. I enjoyed the lessons that I learned in this book, the education that I received while reading this and the outcome of the book. There were just some levels that I had a hard time relating to Chloe. She almost seemed stunted in her personal growth (and maybe she was) and her need to get out and independently explore the world was something that I could not relate to, in one specific way. She was able to emotionally take trips and vacations away from her family and child, which is something that I would have an extremely difficult time doing. I just wouldn't want to. But then again, I have had that independence before in my life and experienced all of that before I had children. I also didn't love that she always was attempting to be "like everyone else" but then would use her disability to her advantage time and time again, commenting that she shouldn't do it. Now, I don't see any issue in using any advantage that she has, but don't bemoan using it, then continue to use it. Just two things that I could not relate to and didn't really love about the book.

Thank you to the Author, Publisher and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

“I am in a bar in Brooklyn listening as two men, my friends, discuss whether or not my life is worth living.”

With that, my bookish friends, I give you the opening line to an absolutely astounding memoir, a sentence that, just maybe, should have been an indication of the massive impact this book would have on me, but I was too caught up in devouring the following words.

“My father looking down at my mother, begrudging her those last seconds in a pure and liminal space where she knew I existed, but did not know the manner of my existence.”

Easy Beauty is Jones’ account of being born with a rare congenital condition that impacts her hips and spine and how this condition shapes the behavior and expectations of those around her. Through interviews with her mother, Jones provides us with glimpses into her early life and proceeds to connect her childhood anxieties to decisions she makes as an adult. She shares her experiences with doctors explaining the limitations of her body, and despite their limitless predictions of what she could never do, her accomplishments surpassed all expectations, including her ability to have children and travel the world.

This brings me to one of my favorite components of the book, her son Wolfgang. The small anecdotes she weaves into the memoir are beautiful and full of passion. For example, her description of opening her backpack during class to find that Wolfgang secretly it with oranges when he heard her stomach growl made me both tear up over this level of empathy and laugh at the strangeness of a child’s mind.

For me, this book exemplified the conflict between the desire to be seen and the desire to disappear entirely. The connections back to her research on famous philosophers helped drive her arguments on beauty constructs, and I believe everyone should take the time to remember that nobody’s life is worth less than somebody else’s. Overall,
this memoir both shattered me and provided me with hope for human kindness. We need more books that are powerful enough to change our perspectives.

This book is clearly the output of a brilliant mind. Chloe Cooper Jones is a prose stylist of the first order, with that rare ability to render a thought into crisp, devastating prose. This memoir had so many sentences worth writing down--i found it both fashionable and obscenely intelligent, accessible but never pander-y.

Jones is not a likable narrator, nor do I think she intends to be. Hers a prickly mind, prone to neither forgiveness or concession. She is judicious, but not particularly kind. Sometimes, she values insularity over forgiveness; and she keeps a grudge. It's an unusual voice, and one I had to get used to.

The main conceit of the memoir is the concept of the “neutral room”. It’s a technique taught to her by an early therapist to deal with her pain, a means of dissociation from both her disabled body and a way for her to consider herself intellectually superior to her peers. It brings her outside, but also above. It's a technique that has both helped her to survive, but here she investigates the problem of the coping mechanism through the lens of investigating what necessitated it in the first place: beauty, and lack of; abledness, and lack of.

A beautifully written, thought-provoking memoir.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Simon & Schuster for this eARC.

First of all, this will not be to everyone’s taste (partly because no book ever is). To locate it: it sits at the intersection of living with a disability and Western philosophy, expressed as a study of beauty. Not everyone cares about (Western) philosophy, or wants to read pages and pages of it. I don’t. However, I connected with the author’s struggles because I’ve lived a lot of them, too; I found this book triggering, and so read it very slowly. I can’t imagine what those who don’t connect with the living with a disability might make of it: will it mean anything? Will it be educational? Will it get tiresome?

The strongest parts for me were when she related her own story — and, correspondingly, the weakest were the philosophical bits, which I understood as Ms Cooper making logical sense of her lived experience (as is her right, of course, but I didn’t connect with that).

In short, this is a difficult book to review, recommend, or rate, as it will either be deeply meaningful to you (as it was to me), or not. It is, however, an excellent addition to memoirs, to memoirs by women, and to memoirs about living with a disability.

Chloe Cooper Jones weaves the lessons of art and philosophy into everyday interactions between able bodied people and herself. Strangers, loved ones, and acquaintances make off hand comments about her disability, they debate the ethicality of her life, they remove her autonomy by forcing their help on her despite her pleas for them to leave her alone. People ask her “why don’t you write about disability since that’s what you know” or “do you think it’s ethical for you to have a child with your disability?”. But in the end, the main focus of this memoir is beauty, rather than disability. Beauty as in being seen in the world as more than or less than. Beauty as a currency to move through spaces with ease. What is beauty and how do able bodied and disabled people alike use it to define their role in the world? This book made me think, tear up, and laugh.

I though this book was really beautiful. It was so interesting to read about and experience the world through the authors eyes. It was at times funny, philosophical, light, deep, relatable and un-relatable; I felt so many things throughout this book. The books covers many topics, such as parenthood, what defines beauty and relationships but focuses heavily on her disability. It really makes you think deeper about how other people live and the struggles they have to deal with on a daily basis and how these things can effect you both physically and mentally. It will also shock and anger you how completely oblivious some people can be.

A fascinating investigation of disability, philosophy and life, anchored around a journey to Italy, told in lush and vivid language. The author's perspective here is so interesting.

Chloe Cooper Jones writes lyrically openly shares with us her life issues her body that due to birth defects causes her pain and unwanted attention.From the heart wrenching opening scene in a bar where she is drinking with two close friends who start discussing her deformities and whether they could live with them as she sits there listening.We travel with her to Europe the scene she writes of her following a young man around a museum is haunting.The author writes about philosophy,philosopher’s she shares with us thoughts on her husband her child.An amazing woman a book that gives you so much to think about perfect for bookclub discussions.

As Chloe Cooper-Jones, the author of this book, moves about her journey of life she details for us in this memoir, what it is like living inside a body of pain and physical limitations. I appreciate her candid perspectives that she wishes folks would not assume the rest of us with more, so-called, able-bodied bodies, would feel so free to think we know more about how her body works and what it needs for assistance than she does herself. I'm amazed at home some folks feel the need to be mean and nasty to those they deem are "less than" themselves, for some reason. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but is the beholder looking deeply enough?

I can see that it would be an excellent idea for one and all of us to read this book and learn some empathy and boundaries when associating and relating with others whom we may label "disabled". Is beauty in the body or in the mind? Can we make assumptions at face value regarding another? These are some points that will arrest us in our thinking. The beauty we need to discover is the person's "essence;" finding the person, is the message I got from this book.

Cooper-Jones writes about various philosophers and philosophies and what they have spoken about and how their wisdom has helped her see beauty in herself. Additionally, how some strength and inspiration could even be interpreted from various sculptures of master craftsmen; the beauty and marvel of their work from multiple angles and of light shed upon them in a hundred variations of light rays and time exposure.

A word of caution to those who'd prefer not to know too much about intimate escapades of the author. Other than that I found the book helpful especially in being taught not to make assumptions of another's needs and to know better boundaries in assisting another person we may deem, "needs help" our way, and most importantly, to see the beauty of a person, below skin surface.

~Eunice C. Reviewer/Blogger~

November 2021

Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the review copy sent by NetGalley and the publisher.

Remarkably elegant writing about beauty in a range of domains: from philosophy to tennis to sites of cultural trauma to Cooper Jones' own body and disability. I admired the sheer amount of ground covered in this book, the characters that felt so rich and alive on the page, and most of all, how she turns her incisive eye on her own actions and guiding beliefs. She is no less hard on herself than the people who judge her body without knowing anything about it, but Jones writes with a cool detachment and a specificity that suits such tension-filled moments perfectly. I was disappointed with the ending which lacked closure for me, but all in all, this is a spectacular book.