Four Sisters

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano’s 400-page novel, was released on March 14, 2023, to superb reviews. Oprah chose it as her hundredth recommended book since she began her book club in 1996. Nevertheless, it took me sixteen months to buy and read it for a ridiculous reason—the title turned me off. When I tried to analyze why, I decided it was because the words sound like a construction worker’s catcall or a sleazy pick-up line.

Too bad, because my negative reaction to the title deprived me of this beautifully written, touching, and fascinating book for sixteen months!

Set mainly in Chicago, Napolitano’s fourth novel is the story of the four Padavano sisters: Julia, the oldest, who always has a plan; Sylvie, only ten months younger, dreamy and bookish but also relentlessly honest with herself; and the twins: Cecelia, who becomes a painter, and Emeline, whose caring nature leads to her opening a childcare center. The book follows the sisters’ lives for over thirty years, starting in the late 1970s as Julia finishes high school and heads to Northwestern.

The book doesn’t begin with the Padavano family in Chicago but with William Waters, who will play a central role in the sisters’ lives. His birth in 1960 in a suburb of Boston is followed days later by the death of his older sister. His parents sink into an apathetic grief from which they never recover, and William grows up knowing that his mother and father don’t want him and won’t take care of him. His only source of companionship and self-worth is basketball, which carries him through high school and away to college at Northwestern. There, he meets Julia Padavano, and they fall in love. Her three sisters quickly approve of him, and her parents, Charlie and Rose, accept him. When William and Julia marry during college, William gets a family that welcomes him and a wife who is happy to manage his life.

A lot happens to these people during the next three decades. They separate and come together dramatically; there are births, deaths, and severe crises. Throughout, the four sisters continue to need each other, and William remains part of their family.

Ann Napolitano is a terrific writer. She switches effortlessly between the points of view of William, Julia, her sister Sylvie, and, later in the book, Alice, William and Julia’s daughter. The story moves through William’s and the Padavanos’ lives surefootedly, pausing to focus on first one and then another event or viewpoint and then moving on through time without rushing readers or deprived them of information.

This book is about how hard it is to tell the truth to yourself; how hard it is, in fact, to understand yourself well enough to know when you are deceiving yourself and hurting your loved ones. What makes this message especially powerful in Hello Beautiful is the profound understanding with which Napolitano writes about her characters’ bad decisions and destructive silences. Even as you, the reader, dread the consequences of their actions, the author has made you so familiar with the people in her book and so fond of them that you cannot help but sympathize with them and their mistakes, even as you want to shake them and say, “For God sake, don’t do that.”

Above all, this is a novel about love. Nothing can undo the damage William has suffered because his parents failed to love him, but when he is seen clearly and loved in spite of and because of his flawed self, he starts to heal. As for the Padavano sisters, although their decisions pull them apart, Napolitano permits them to rediscover their interdependence before it’s too late.

And “Hello, beautiful?” In the book, it represents the opposite of an objectifying catcall. Charlie Padavano, the sisters’ father, greets each of his girls like this as she comes home; to them, the words are a sign of his love and acceptance of each daughter just as she is.

Have you read Hello Beautiful or anything else by Ann Napolitano? Is there a novel you’ve enjoyed, recently or long ago, about a family changing over several decades?

Photos: Ann Napolitano by Jake Chessum, Chicago by Amit Thakral, basketball player by Chrofit, father and daughter by Filipe Leme