Contemporary fiction
The ultimate noir fairy tale...if you fell for Beauty and the Beast (and who didn't?) you will fall for this very offbeat pair. Prepare yourself for one of the strangest but also one of the most genuine, and unforgettable, love stories you'll ever read. Bryn Greenwood's pristine, evocative writing is
perfect for creating this deeply hypnotic tale about love found in the most unlikely of places - a backwoods meth lab in the rural Midwest. Wavy is the daughter of a man who runs the meth lab. Her circumscribed world is woefully bereft of anything wonderful; her short life has been a daisy chain of abuse, abandonment, and hopelessness. When we first meet her, she is just a child, already deeply scarred by mistreatment at the hands of her drug-addled mother and drug-producing father. An
unlikely rescuer appears in the shape of Kellen, the hired muscle at the lab, an over-sized misfit just as damaged as Wavy - but more than twice her age. Wavy is so starved for love and affection that her heart opens to Kellen, and Kellen cannot help but enter into the relationship she offers him. It is a strange sensation to be rooting for a little girl and the much older thug who goes beyond rescuer to become her lover. But amid all the very ugly things in the world these two inhabit
(very, very ugly), their connection is the only wonderful thing they have. If you fell for the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast (and who didn't?) you will fall for this very offbeat pair. So I found myself wishing the couple happiness through their many trials. The course of true love never runs easy, not in fairy tales and certainly not in the very real, very grim world the two lovers inhabit.Quick take
Why I love it
Nina SankovitchBestselling Author
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is the ultimate noir fairy tale, with Wavy as the wounded beauty, small and blonde, abused in body and spirit, and Kellen as the beast, big and hulking but just as broken. The evil father, wasted mother, and other family members, all have their roles to play - and they all impart truths that move the book along at a fast and mesmerizing pace.
I read this stunning book in one go. It was well worth giving up a night of sleep to become part of this strange tale of love unfolding in an ugly world. Because in the end, no matter just how wrong Wavy and Kellen are for each other in so many ways, in the most important way, they are just so right.
Synopsis
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives.
As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.
By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery. When tragedy rips Wavy's family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny of the outside world. A powerful novel you won’t soon forget, Bryn Greenwood's All the Ugly and Wonderful Things challenges all we know and believe about love.
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All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Summary
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Plot Summary of “All the Ugly and Wonderful Things” by Bryn Greenwood. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality study guides that feature detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, quotes, and essay topics.
Set in rural America in the 1960s and 1970s, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (2016), American author Bryn Greenwood’s novel follows Wavonna “Wavy” Quinn, born in the back seat of a car to a small-town drug dealer, who meets Kellen, an ex-convict. Despite a large age disparity, the two begin a morally questionable romantic relationship and strive to build a functional life together. The novel’s point of view shifts episodically between Quinn, Kellen, and several minor characters, capturing different aspects of the protagonists’ struggles via the inner commentaries of those around them.
The novel begins with the story of Quinn’s birth and early life. Her mother, Val, not taking care to ensure that her birth goes smoothly, ends up delivering Quinn in a car that breaks down. Throughout her childhood, Quinn suffers due to Val’s negligence: she is physically and mentally abused, and mistreated by the man Val marries, a meth dealer named Liam.
Quinn’s main narrative takes place between the ages of five and twenty-two. First, Quinn’s cousin Amy takes over the narration, recalling the time she lived with Quinn. Quinn is initially placed in the state’s foster system after the arrest of both of her parents for drug-related crimes. When Quinn goes to live with Amy, Amy observes that Quinn is terrified to eat in a group setting and hardly ever speaks. After spending several weeks with Quinn, Amy realizes that Val has conditioned Quinn to be terrified of germs. She has also convinced Quinn that germs are everywhere, putting her in a debilitating Catch-22 situation that gives her a pathological aversion to human contact.
Next, the point of view shifts to Quinn, as she returns to live with Val and Liam in a small farmhouse near the town of Powell. In the remote rural area, Quinn becomes an avid stargazer. One night, as Quinn sneaks out, she hears a motorcycle speeding down a nearby road. She runs over to watch it and inadvertently scares the driver, causing him to crash. The man is Jesse Joe Barfoot Jr., who goes by Kellen for short. Quinn calls Liam for help, and Liam’s reaction implies that Kellen is one of his meth pushers.
Kellen and Quinn quickly become closer than anyone expected. Though he is twenty-three and Quinn is only eight, they begin a romantic relationship that even Quinn’s negligent parents question. Though Kellen is barely educated, he intuitively understands that it is wrong to have a relationship with a child, and tries to abstain from physical contact. His own plotline reveals that he grew up on an Indian reservation and suffered severe abuse at the hands of his father. Quinn, on the other hand, naively perceives their relationship as natural, healthy, and judgment-free.
When Quinn turns thirteen, she and Kellen get engaged. On her fourteenth birthday, a cascade of serious events take place: she loses her virginity to Kellen in his automobile shop, discovered by her extended family, and her parents both die in a drug-related revenge murder. Kellen is sentenced to ten years in prison for having intercourse with a minor, and Quinn moves in with her aunt Brenda. After she is ripped away from her half-brother, Donal, she suffers an extended depressive episode and becomes desperately lonely.
Quinn focuses on her studies, making it to college, where she studies astrophysics, continuing her childhood passion for stargazing. When Kellen is finally released from prison, she learns that Brenda has secretly attended his parole hearings and tried to keep him in jail. As a result, Kellen assumes that Quinn now identifies him as her childhood rapist. Quinn locates Kellen, but after they have sex, Kellen tells her that he cannot violate his parole by seeing her again. She goes back to school and tries to fight the courts to change Kellen’s parole conditions.
At the end of the novel, Quinn finally secures a legal reunion with Kellen. They marry and move in with Donal. Brenda finally comes to support their relationship and apologizes for her attempts to separate them. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things offers a sympathetic portrayal of what is legally defined as statutory rape in modern America. Though its message is extremely contentious, it adds to contemporary discourse on different forms of romance that are considered immoral or taboo.