Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

Some books arrive quietly and then refuse to leave you. Easy Beauty is one of them.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Chloe Cooper Jones’s debut memoir is a startling, lyrical, and often very funny meditation on beauty, motherhood, and the body. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis, Jones has spent her life navigating a world that insists on staring. Here, she stares back — at art, at strangers, at herself.

The journey takes her from a Beyoncé concert in Milan to the Borghese Gallery in Rome, from Cambodia to a quiet conversation with her young son. Along the way, she dismantles our assumptions about who gets to be seen, loved, and considered worthy of awe.

The reviews say it best:

• “A brilliant, beautiful book.” — The New York Times Book Review
• “Stunning… a philosophical memoir of rare candor and intelligence.” — The Washington Post
• “One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.” — Leslie Jamison

This is a memoir for readers who loved The Argonauts, The Year of Magical Thinking, or anyone who appreciates writing that thinks hard and feels deeply at the same time.

It’s the kind of book we love to hand-sell here at the shop — the kind that pairs perfectly with a long afternoon, a window seat, and the sound of waves working away at the rocks just outside the cove.

Come in and pick up a copy. Or let us tuck one into a package for you. Either way, you’re in for something extraordinary.