ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK All the Tiny Beauties follows five characters in California as their lives intertwine.
All the Tiny Beauties begins with a kitchen fire that sends the reclusive Webster Jackson to the home of his new neighbor, Colleen, who discovers him on her doorstep wearing a lacy peignoir, his house in flames. Unwilling to take responsibility for the lonely eccentric, Colleen reaches out to Webb’s estranged daughter, Debra. She also helps him find a live-in companion, a young adult reeling from the loss of her childhood friend.
Moving among perspectives and generations, we see the longings and vulnerabilities that drive and impede these characters as their stories intertwine—Webb’s first love clashing with his last; Colleen embarking on a secret affair with Debra; the older Webb and his young housemate, Hannah, forming a bond over tragedy, guilt, and his passion for baking.
Confronting the many ways they’ve failed others as well as themselves, Webb, Colleen, Hannah, and Debra slowly find ways forward and ways out. While exploring the fragile nature of our connections to one another, All the Tiny Beauties asks larger questions about the constraints society imposes that warp and wound, leading us to deny those things that make us wholly ourselves.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Jenn Scott’s debut collection, Her Adult Life, was longlisted for the PEN America/Bingham Award in 2018. Her work has appeared in such journals as Fiction, Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, and Gulf Coast. A native of Pennsylvania, she now lives and writes in Oakland, California.
REVIEWS
“The best books are the ones that fill holes—in our lives, in our hearts, in our bookshelves—we didn't even know we had until the books showed up to fill them. Jenn Scott's All the Tiny Beauties is one of those books. It is a time-traveling, mind-bending wonder, a novel about Oakland now and then, about the fluidity of gender, of family, of place. It reminds me of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad in its wicked sense of humor; its intelligence; its patience; its careful, fond study of how love can drift into hate and then, if we're lucky, back into love again. A wonderful first novel by one of our most talented up-and-coming writers.”
— Brock Clarke, author of 'Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?'
“All the Tiny Beauties is a careful, beautiful literary novel that ponders the contents of happiness and the purpose with which people lead their lives. By questioning what it means to conform to gender and social roles, it makes a deep investment in the multiplicity of identities.”
— Foreword Reviews
"All the Tiny Beauties is a wonder, an arrow-to-the-heart kind of a novel. At once compact and expansive, this book is part family reckoning, part love story, part grappling with notions of gender that both complete and confine us. Like Jenny Offill in Department of Speculation, Scott is a master at balancing the melancholic longing of her characters with moments of bristling hilarity and joy. All the Tiny Beauties is a wise and urgent novel that rewards you on every page."
All the Tiny Beauties follows five characters in California as their lives intertwine.
All the Tiny Beauties begins with a kitchen fire that sends the reclusive Webster Jackson to the home of his new neighbor, Colleen, who discovers him on her doorstep wearing a lacy peignoir, his house in flames. Unwilling to take responsibility for the lonely eccentric, Colleen reaches out to Webb’s estranged daughter, Debra. She also helps him find a live-in companion, a young adult reeling from the loss of her childhood friend.
Moving among perspectives and generations, we see the longings and vulnerabilities that drive and impede these characters as their stories intertwine—Webb’s first love clashing with his last; Colleen embarking on a secret affair with Debra; the older Webb and his young housemate, Hannah, forming a bond over tragedy, guilt, and his passion for baking.
Confronting the many ways they’ve failed others as well as themselves, Webb, Colleen, Hannah, and Debra slowly find ways forward and ways out. While exploring the fragile nature of our connections to one another, All the Tiny Beauties asks larger questions about the constraints society imposes that warp and wound, leading us to deny those things that make us wholly ourselves.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Jenn Scott’s debut collection, Her Adult Life, was longlisted for the PEN America/Bingham Award in 2018. Her work has appeared in such journals as Fiction, Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Santa Monica Review, and Gulf Coast. A native of Pennsylvania, she now lives and writes in Oakland, California.
REVIEWS
“The best books are the ones that fill holes—in our lives, in our hearts, in our bookshelves—we didn't even know we had until the books showed up to fill them. Jenn Scott's All the Tiny Beauties is one of those books. It is a time-traveling, mind-bending wonder, a novel about Oakland now and then, about the fluidity of gender, of family, of place. It reminds me of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad in its wicked sense of humor; its intelligence; its patience; its careful, fond study of how love can drift into hate and then, if we're lucky, back into love again. A wonderful first novel by one of our most talented up-and-coming writers.”
— Brock Clarke, author of 'Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?'
“All the Tiny Beauties is a careful, beautiful literary novel that ponders the contents of happiness and the purpose with which people lead their lives. By questioning what it means to conform to gender and social roles, it makes a deep investment in the multiplicity of identities.”
— Foreword Reviews
"All the Tiny Beauties is a wonder, an arrow-to-the-heart kind of a novel. At once compact and expansive, this book is part family reckoning, part love story, part grappling with notions of gender that both complete and confine us. Like Jenny Offill in Department of Speculation, Scott is a master at balancing the melancholic longing of her characters with moments of bristling hilarity and joy. All the Tiny Beauties is a wise and urgent novel that rewards you on every page."
— Sarah Domet, author of 'The Guineveres'
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
I
Webb, 2001
Webb, 1939
Colleen, 2001
Debra, 2001
Beverly, 2001
Colleen, 2001
Hannah, 2001
II
Debra, 1969
Webb, 1956
Beverly, 1957
Webb, 1970
Webb, 2001
Hannah, 2001
Hannah, 1989
Debra, 2001
Webb, 1941
III
Colleen, 2001
Beverly, 2001
Beverly 1955
Hannah, 2001
Hannah, 2000
Webb, 1973
Hannah, 2001
IV
Beverly, 1983
Beverly, 1963
Beverly, 2001
Webb, 1983
Debra, 2001
Hannah, 2001
Colleen, 2001
Hannah, 2001
V
Webb, 2001
Debra, 2001
Hannah, 2001
Acknowledgments
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC