THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 17
O BEAUTIFUL (St. Martin’s, 320 pp., $27.99), Jung Yun’s mes-
merizing and timely second novel, opens with one of the
most uncomfortable scenes I’ve read in a long time. Elinor
Hanson, a former model who is desperate to break into
journalism, is on a plane bound for North Dakota, where
she’s researching a story about how the oil boom has
changed the landscape where she grew up. She’s jittery,
nervous and wants to sleep, but her salesman seatmate is
in the mood to schmooze. She rebuffs his cringe-inducing
advances and he becomes miffed, then petulant. “I was
only making conversation,” he says. “Don’t flatter your-
self. You’re not my type.”
When Elinor falls asleep, he does not stay on his side of
the armrest. Welcome to the intersection of fear and trying
to be polite, where a little red light of panic will blink in
your peripheral vision for the duration of this novel.
Yun’s Mack truck of a story transports us to Avery, N.D.,
“where thousands of itinerant oil workers from recession-
ravaged parts of the country” have descended “upon a
town of 4,000 that was unprepared to take them in.” Eli-
nor’s hotel is booked to the hilt. The local watering hole has
a fraternity-basement vibe, with an air of desperation
hanging over its mostly male clientele. Every resource —
food, decency, kindness, peace, even air — is in short sup-
ply. Yun creates such a sense of claustrophobia, it’s as if the
sky has been cranked down a few notches.
Elinor is in the area on behalf of the Standard, a Very
Important Magazine, completing an assignment that was
originally intended for her former professor and love inter-
est, Richard, who has been waylaid by hip surgery. At his
recommendation, she has been dispatched to conduct pre-
viously scheduled interviews and tell the story he envi-
sioned: a postcard from a place altered by greed, despera-
tion and competing interests.
But there’s more to the oil boom than meets the eye, and
Elinor is well positioned to make sense of it. She’s both in-
sider and outsider, having grown up on a nearby Air Force
base as the daughter of an American officer and a Korean
woman (who eventually bolted, leaving Elinor and her sis-
ter with their father). Yun writes, “For as long as she can
remember, people have been pushing her out of one circle
or another, making her feel less American, less Korean,
and now even less North Dakotan than she thinks she is.”
Elinor follows her instincts, paying close attention to the
women she meets along the way. There’s the widow whose
husband sold mineral rights to their land so he could pay
his medical bills; now she can’t drink the tap water in her
own home. There’s the club dancer living in a parking lotwith her abusive boyfriend, the bartender who’s seen it all
and Elinor’s sister, Maren, whose attempts to reconnect
come with a slimy ulterior motive. Oddly, Elinor’s ties to
strangers feel stronger than the slack connection she
shares with her own flesh and blood.
The loudest voices in “O Beautiful” are the ones we
never hear. They’re the perspectives and experiences of
women who have disappeared: 27-year-old blond, blue-
eyed Leanne Lowell, last seen jogging eastbound on Rural
Route 1; and the 28 women, teenagers and girls (“a figure
that’s both shockingly high and surely an undercount”)
from the Mahua tribe who have been reported missing
over a period of two years.
When Elinor turns her attention to their stories, her arti-
cle — and her future as a woman of words — begins to take
shape. 0Group Text/‘O Beautiful,’ by Jung Yun/By Elisabeth EganIn this novel, all that stands between a writer and her dreams is a trip to the land of her nightmares.
A journalist risks
everything to chase a scoop,
only to discover it’s not the
story she was expecting.
The one she uncovers is
complicated, dangerous and
personal.Yun’s field trip to North
Dakota provides an on-ramp
into conversations about
racism, environmentalism,
journalism, economics and
sisterhood.ELISABETH EGANis an editor at the Book Review and the author of “A Window Opens.”
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How do Elinor’s age and life experience factor into the
unfolding of the story?
+
“O Beautiful” includes several scenes involving racist language. What
did you make of Yun’s decision to include certain words guaranteed to
make her audience uncomfortable? Did you feel they added to or sub-
tracted from the impact of her message?
+I liked how Elinor’s family back story wasn’t wrapped up and tied neatly
with a bow, but I wanted answers about her mother! Agree, disagree?
Why?SUGGESTED READING
NOMADLAND,by Jessica Bruder. This is the book that inspired the movie star-
ring Frances McDormand (worth watching, if you haven’t already). Bruder
follows an ever-growing community of older people who move, as she puts
it, “like blood cells through the veins of the country,” living out of Jeeps,
campers and repurposed buses as they chase seasonal jobs.AMITY AND PROSPERITY,by Eliza Griswold. It takes a writer who is both a jour-
nalist and a poet to muster the scientific knowledge and the sensitivity that
Griswold brings to the subject of fracking in this evenhanded account.
“Amity and Prosperity” is, as our critic wrote, “neither an outraged sermon
delivered from a populist soapbox nor a pinched, professorial lecture.” Two
communities are cracked open. What happens next?To join the conversation about “O Beautiful,” go to our Face-
book page, @nytbooks, or our Instagram, @NYTBooks.Welcome to Group Text, a monthly column for readers
and book clubs about the novels, memoirs and short-
story collections that make you want to talk, ask ques-
tions and dwell in another world for a little bit longer.