https://lithub.com/esther-kinsky-on-is-beauty-good-the-novel-by-rosalind-belben/
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“It was an unexpected lesson in dissonance as an ingredient of beauty.”
“The title of the novel—and is it a novel?”
“Loose threads are a feature of Belben’s writing; they match the dissonances and, like them, eventually turn out to be the most important part of the fabric.”
“Disturbance, distortion, destruction are the words that come to mind when we think of nature today.”
“Concepts of the beautiful diverge as much as concepts of what is ‘good’ in an ethical sense.”
“The keyword here is longing.”
“Used with the permission of the publisher, New York Review of Books.”
“A group of people had assembled on a meadow just outside a village, an audience in waiting as it turned out, standing quietly against the backdrop of the Tatra Mountains.”
“Occasionally German words and expressions crop up, without comment or translation.”
“Perhaps, having just arrived in the UK from Europe, I was looking in other literary directions.”
“No stomping rhythms here, no shrill blasts in unison, no sweaty masculinity souring the air, no red faces.”
“‘Human beings are so full of longings,’ remarks Kai towards the end of the chapter ‘Tears for Streams’.”
“It is treacherous terrain in the absence of a consensus about the norms defining beauty.”
“.] I call to him, Franzi, was machst du hier?, wohin?, and he smiles radiantly, not naughtily or guiltily, and says in his baby voice, bicycling, to the mountains he says, and the old dog too; and I try to explain it’s dangerous, he’s too young to be out in the country miles from home alone, and he smiles, and smiles, and there’s no stopping him; it’s my wheel, he says, my wheel is hungry, it eats and I can’t stop it, it’s terribly hungry, me and the dog takes it out to eat; and he waves to me, cheerfully he waves to me, a three-year-old, and off he pedals .”
“Literary Hub » Esther Kinsky on Is Beauty Good, the Novel by Rosalind Belben Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Literary Criticism Craft and Advice In Conversation On Translation Fiction and Poetry Short Story From the Novel Poem News and Culture History Science Politics Biography Memoir Food Technology Bookstores and Libraries Film and TV Travel Music Art and Photography The Hub Style Design Sports Become A Member Lit Hub Radio The Lit Hub Podcast Awakeners Fiction/Non/Fiction The Critic and Her Publics Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast Memoir Nation Beyond the Page First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing Thresholds The Cosmic Library Culture Schlock Reading Lists Reading Challenge Book Marks Best Reviewed Books CrimeReads True Crime The Daily Thrill Log In Craft and Criticism Fiction and Poetry News and Culture Lit Hub Radio Reading Lists Reading Challenge Book Marks CrimeReads Log In Is Beauty Good , the Novel by Rosalind Belben"> Esther Kinsky on Is Beauty Good , the Novel by Rosalind Belben “Beauty is a concept as vast as it is vague.” Via NYRB Esther Kinsky August 11, 2026 Many years ago I spent a summer in southeastern Poland.”
“In borderlands the ground is always disturbed by history, and south-eastern Poland is no exception.”
“All of them men, each of them with a moustache, most of them elderly—or so it seemed to me at the time.”
“The most striking feature of their music seemed to me its embrace of a certain dissonance, its reliance on an element of friction which was never jarring.”
“One thread that runs through the entire novel is an element of Fremde between the lines.”
“In ‘Air Ride’, the narrator’s—and apparent interlocutor’s—consistent silence emphasises the erratic nature of Sepp’s elaborations on beauty, music, frocks and landscape.”