La Casa della Bellezza by Melba Escobar

It's a hard book La Casa della Bellezza by Melba Escobar and tremendously sad although enchanting as well. Written using the first person, (when there are not scenes with dialogues) it's a sort of long tale of the various protagonists of this story.

Written wonderfully well, descriptions are enchanting,  shockingly beauty, poetic; Melba is in grade of filtering sentiments, moods, in a captivating way. She is stylistically perfect.

This one is a story of poverty and richness; Karen is a beautician in an aesthetic center called the Casa della Bellezza an exclusive Aesthetic Center where clients, customers, of the rich Bogota are mainly famous ladies. Karen is an Indios, and in her early 20s. She has a son of 4 years and a boyfriend and she would want to reunite the entire family for that Christmas. For this reason she is avidly saving money hiding them in the mattress; for a better existence, for a better future.
An afternoon a girl of 17 years goes to the Casa della Bellezza because of an appointment with her boyfriend. It is a special occasion and she wants to be beautiful.
The day after Karen discovers that the girl was found dead. Apparently she killed herself but Karen and also the mother of Sabrina, strongly doubts it. The mother and father of Sabrina in the while starts a parallel researches for discovering the truth, while the various protagonists will reveal themselves and their purposes.

The tranquil routine and good mood and dreams of Karen are broken forever when she discovers that someone stole all her money; a carnal violence from the owner of the house where she lives in and the indifference of the wife will mean to her a mental devastation and a personal perdition.

Feeling the sensation of being "dirty" she confesses her fears to a lady in search of understanding and comprehension because her husband cheated her with wagons of lovers during the decades. This lady substantially succumbed at the mental power of that man.
She wrote brilliant books all donated to this man because crazy of love for him. He became famous; she became anonymous and not respected at all; her husband traveled accompanied by sweet companies per decades while she stayed home writing the next book for her man. She understood this mental mechanism, and so the narcissistic spirit of her husband and her obscurantism caused by love she proved for him only decades after.

In the while, Karen without money and with a lot of broken dreams doesn't know what to do. A friend of her insists: better if she tries to recuperate her money starting a work as escort.
Oh yes: beautiful bags, and shoes, and whatever she wants, while slowly slowly Karen forgets who she is, why she is in Bogota and her expectations.

Not only: the girl will continue to goes on hurting herself, because she hates her, because she can't accept what she became with the time, cleaning her hands continuously, rejecting the imagine she saw on the mirror.

People she spent time with were rich people and look what a luck, poor Karen, the ones connected with the homicide of the 17 years old girl.

At the end, the weakest person of all this story, Karen the beautician will pay for everyone, because no one could be, considered their social status accused of the murder of a girl.

It's a strong book this time surrounded always by a suicidal air and by the loss of every kind of hope because of the injustices seen, experienced and lived by the protagonist.

This book and this story are a finch in the stomach and a message for everyone.

It's a message for parents: trying to understand children and what they do and who they are friends with considering the society where we live in, is more than necessary; it's a message to young and desperate girls in search of money because desperate and because they lost everything. There is always a plan B. And a best advice. Maybe it's better to hear various bells before to jump in the first and obscure road. I want to precise that to my point of view, in this case the protagonist was like in a cage, because no one seriously in grade of helping her. Partially because she hid what happened, and speaking is a first cure when there are terrible problems like the ones experienced by the protagonist; second because she wasn't surrounded by good people in grade of giving help or the proper answer. Simply, she wasn't as strong as the other ones were and she didn't search in other directions for more help and more answers.

The question in this case is: exist real escapism? Because as explains the author somewhere in the middle of the book it's like if every person would consciously know his/her ends but he/she can't stop her/his own destiny and every step she/he does it means to digging metaphorically her/his own grave and his/her own destiny.

Let's hope for better and for some optimism thinking that the future can be bright, do you want? 


Highly recommended for learning hos to avoid the hell experienced by the protagonist.


I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori