Just like Beauty

Quotes

“A gutsy and wildly imaginative first novel. It’s a freak show but with human touches about the need for motherly approval and the ecstasy of first love. Bottom line: beautiful debut.” People

“Captivating…a work of striking lyricism and jittery energy…Lerner writes in a prose style that is intricate, poetic, and full of surprises…In a lesser writer’s hands, such an exaggerated view of womanhood might have seemed silly or unbelievable. But Lerner has the gifts to make it all work—the girls seem real, and you want them to escape.” New York Times Book Review

“Lerner is so adept at couching the grotesque within the commonplace that the future seems just a few weeks away…Surprisingly witty and tender.” USA Today

“Fiercely imagined…A bracing vision of how young women are taught to strive for a synthetic femininity.” Washington Post

“A quirky coming-of-age story set in an eerily recognizable future…[Lerner] writes sentences that are surprising, inspired, and lyrical…reminiscent of David Foster Wallace.” Cleveland Plain Dealer

“More comic relief than feminist manifesto…weird, wacky, and worth it.” San Diego Union-Tribune

“Wildly imaginative and, at times, hilarious…Poignantly real and true.” Out magazine

“A wicked twister of a first novel…critiques not just society at large; it also focuses micro, exposing the failures to communicate and connect that alienate husband from wife, parent from child…Lisa Lerner merges Naomi Wolf, Tom Robbins, and Thomas Bellamy.” Miami (FL) Herald

“Dramatic…theatrical…the future [she] creates is so frightening because it’s so easy to imagine; the casual, tacitly accepted violence and environmental degradation feel grounded in a present-day reality.” Hartford Courant

“Part comedy, part science fiction, part coming-of-age drama, this novel rocks on what it means to be a girl, no matter who you are.” Teen magazine