Oprah Book Club Tarot Style
Oprah’s latest Book Club pick, her 100th, is Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful.
Hello Beautiful, the saga of the four Padavano sisters, working class Catholic Chicago girls trying to live up to parental and cultural expectations while at the same time pursuing independent lives, is an homage to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Little Women is still my favorite book of all time, so if there was an homage out there, I was going to read it. I can’t say I read it with an open mind. Indeed, I read it with a critical mind, the kind of mind Louisa May Alcott’s Marmee, who gifts her children Pilgrim’s Progress to guide their young moral choices, would appreciate. The Padavano mother of Hello Beautiful, would not condone this critical thinking – it’s her way, or the highway, literally, as she kicks daughter after daughter to the literal curb when they go astray of the path she had chosen for them. Eventually, she says feh to all of them, and flees to Florida, disgusted with her children, and at the same time, escaping from her own poor life choices as well.
The biggest rift the March sisters have? Amy, in a fit of jealousy, burns Jo’s novel. Several days go by, Amy has a near death experience, and all is forgiven. The Padavano sisters, not so much. Rifts and lies divide the four sisters over the course of decades. While the March sisters had Pilgrim’s Progress, the Padavano sisters had Little Women, and the only thing they managed to learn from Little Women is whichever sister is sick, is Beth.
Perhaps the biggest difference? The Padavano sisters’ father, Charlie Padavano, greets them with his catch phrase, “Hello Beautiful!” as “Charlie had seen and loved each of them for who they were . . . the greeting was nice enough to make them want to leave the room and come in all over again.” Charlie also spouts Whitman at the drop of a hat, and the book itself begins with a Whitman epigraph from Song of Myself. Louisa May Alcott’s parents were transcendentalists, her father Bronson Alcott was friends with Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne. Louisa herself was a transcendentalist, but with a practical twist, that self-reliance came through hard work and sacrifice, which leads to nonconformity, individualism, and subsequently gratitude and happiness. Whitman, while he idolized Thoreau, and embraced the idea that everything and everyone in nature is connected, Whitman’s work also embraces sexuality and the ego.
So, if you inserted the March sisters with a healthy dose of sex and vanity, you’d probably wind up with the Padavano sisters, who chose to take self-reliance to the extreme, and forgot the part where they were all connected, and that people are essentially good, and did not heed Marmee’s counsel, ““think over your blessings, and be grateful.” They are too busy being self-absorbed and lying to be grateful. To the March sisters, sisterly love is unconditional. The Padavano sisters, on the other hand, love on their terms, and forgiveness does not come easily.
This book is billed as a tear jerker, a weeper, but the Beth sister is easily pegged, and by the time its over, I really wasn’t moved at all. I will say that I did believe the depiction of mental illness in the novel, and while the characters’ choices are, in my opinion, wholly incredible, the writing for the most part was solid, and the book moves quickly.
So with that said, let’s discuss, tarot style! I’ll be using the Niabi Tarot by Giovanni Vachetta from Il Meneghello, an historic deck from 1893, with Marseille style Trumps, but illustrated pips. After reading the book, I had these Tarot Book Club Questions:
1. In order not to slip back into suicidal ideations and deep depression, and to move forward, the mentally ill character William, is given a mantra by his therapist, “no bullshit, no lies.” But, his, and everyone elses’ life is shaped by the one big fat lie he clings to until the end novel. Other characters protect this big, fat lie, and in doing so, the mantra becomes “no bullshit, no lies, except for this big fat lie that we’ll all just push to the back, and pretend it’s the truth so that all of our lives are easier.”
So, do we invent mantras for ourselves to actually live by them, or to make us feel like we’re living by them? Are mantras swords or shields? What is the value of a mantra?
Here, we have a young child, holding on to his cup and trying to balance a tray with two cups. The two cups can also be seen as measuring devices, and if the child switches what hand their cup is in, the scales will tip. The cup is the mantra, and the mantra helps tip the scales. The child grows up. They found their balance on the ground, and can now ride a horse. The cup becomes the coin, and something to focus on, a goal. And then finally, that mantra becomes a wreath, holding it all together.
So a mantra, like a metaphor, can be a sword and a shield. The value of a mantra is that it provides a measure for which you can evaluate your own behavior. When dickering between choices, and you’re considering well, on this hand I could do this, or that hand I could do that, a mantra will be what tips the scales. In focusing on this mantra, it allows you to have perspective, and when things go off the rails, the mantra protects you, at least you know you tried.
2.Would Louisa May Alcott like this homage to her classic story of family and the unconditional love among sisters?
Here we see a triangle of coins. Louisa would recognize her work as the foundation of this novel – the two bottom coins being Little Women and Good Wives, and the top coin being Hello Beautiful. However, she wouldn’t see the need to revisit her novel – it’s all over done, stick 10 swords in it. She would have been more impressed if the author had gotten on her house, raised a glass to her, and rode off and found her own story.
3. In the Book Club Reading guide, Ms. Napolitano says this about the book:
In my fiction, I create worlds I want to inhabit: I missed my dad, and so I wrote about the father of the Padavano girls,
a lovely man named Charlie. He always greets his four daughters with the words “Hello beautiful,” and the warmth
and sincerity of this greeting pulls each girl’s specific, inner beauty to the surface. I came to appreciate, along with the
characters in the book, the remarkable power of Charlie’s love and attention. Our world would be radically different,
and better, if we looked at one another the way Charlie looks at his girls.
Would our world be a radically different place if we all looked at each other the way Charlie looks at his girls?
I woman holds up a coin. She is distracted from the task at hand, winding yarn. The sword in the middle had severed that coin from the seven in the last card. She looks into the coin, like a mirror, and sees herself as separate and distinct from that group of coins on the end. Indeed, her coin is different, reversed. She looks at that coin like Charlie looks at his girls. She has been told she is special, that she is beautiful, and her one coin in which she sees herself in its reflection, confirms it. She is after all, a Queen. Is it a gift or a curse to be separated from the pack? That sword in the middle, which surgically severed the coin from the group was a painful process. It’s always difficult to embrace your uniqueness, even if it is a gift. It’s one thing to be told you’re special, another to embrace it. This will always be true, and the world would not be radically different regardless. Past the sword, we have a cherub holding a banner with two coins, with two figures looking straight at each other. This is how the world would be radically different – if we just looked at each other, acknowledged each other, seeing the sameness rather than the differences.
I had other questions, but they would be spoiler-y, and I wouldn’t want to ruin the book for anyone. The next book I’ll be taking a look at, probably next week, is Crying at the H Mart, by Michelle Zauner. Before then, though, I’ll have other things to examine, so stay tuned!
