Beauty Salon

a very short book that was originally written in what I believe is Italian. A young man owns a salon but when his brethren start developing "an illness", he changes the beauty parlor to a makeshift hospice. Very matter of fact; almost no real emotion expressed. But then again, it took me 45 minutes to read the whole thing, so who cares?

At only 63 pages, I hesitate to call this book a novel. As you read, however, the story fills in with a power and depth, along with a backstory of history and motivations that every reader will create for him/herself, that is massive. The narrator is a man who saved his street-earned money and builds a beauty salon. There it is easy to see that he wants to create a place of beauty and serenity. He loves his aquariums, and talks about how he learned about the different kinds of fish and their needs. I think that, like living underwater in an aquarium, he hopes that his beauty salon will mute the real world. But an unnamed plague is in his city. It is clearly HIV/AIDS, although it is never mentioned by name. The narrator turns his beauty salon into the Terminal -- selling everything in the place (the hair dryers, the mirrors, the chairs) and buys beds, supplies, and creates a place for men suffering from the disease to die. It is not a place for treatment, or for maudlin talk with loved ones (who are banned, at any rate, from coming in). But a place to come when the only other place open to you to die in is the street. This book is deeply moving. I understand that the original writing was gorgeous. Certainly Mr. Hollander's translation is unforgettable. This isn't the sort of sad story where I want to cry; this story just left me aghast at the human condition. It seems like some things are so bad that even the angels can only watch mutely, with no clear understanding of what is happening. Having said all that, don't be put off from reading this work. This writer is a wonderful talent.

The unnamed narrator is the owner of a popular beauty salon, which is manned by himself and two other male friends who dress like women, in order to provide excitement into their lives and to put their customers more at ease. One of the friends asks the narrator to provide shelter to another young man who is dying from an illness that bears close resemblance to AIDS, as neither his family nor any facilities will care for him. Soon afterward, others who are similarly afflicted come to his salon, and he converts it into the Terminal, where only men at the end stage of the illness are allowed to stay. His colleagues have succumbed to the illness, and he is the only provider to his guests, as he rejects all requests for help from religious and medical benefactors. He is a competent but remote caregiver, both to his guests and the tropical fish that were once the highlight of the salon. The dying are not permitted any comforts other than candy, and one young man is savagely beaten by the owner after he tries to run away. Only one young man elicits any sympathy from him, but only fleetingly. Later, the narrator develops telltale signs of the illness, and realizes that he is beyond hope. Only then does he reflect on his life and those of his guests, as he wonders if anyone will take care of them in their last days. Beauty Salon was a very short but superb and unforgettable novella from an author largely unknown outside of Mexico who hopefully will gain greater exposure after this work.

Bellatin, Mario, "Beauty Salon", City Lights, 2009. A Disturbing Yet Beautiful Allegory Amos Lassen "Beauty Salon" is one of the shortest books I have ever read yet it is one of the most beautiful and most disturbing. It is set in a city that is unnamed and it is dying because of an epidemic of an unnamed disease. A transvestite hairdresser has turned his beauty salon into a hospice for men who are dying and he cares for them with total indifference. The men have been pushed aside by family and friends and many have no place to go. This is why the salon has become a refuge. The hairdresser who has an aquarium watches the death and decay with the same eyes that he watches his fish and they see people who arrive and then die and isolation becomes more intense. Bellatin gives us language that is poetic that is haunting and existential in nature. There are details that I may never forget and the reality that the author paints is so beautiful yet sad that it will take me a very long time to forget what I read here. The book or perhaps novella is a better word (only 63 pages in length) was originally written in Spanish in 1999 and what it says is very, very powerful. In fact I think the reason that the story is so powerful is because of what the author did not say and left for us to fill in. I feel completely unsettled after the read and when I went back to read it a second time, I felt that much more strongly. I think that the book can best be described as a gay man's reflection on the days when sexual excess ruled until AIDS entered his life and exchanged death for life. The beauty salon becomes the Terminal as in a terminal, the last stop of life. What was once an elegant shop is now a desolate and depressing hospice that represents death. The fish in the aquarium that do live are quite simply allegorical for what is happening outside of the salon in the larger world, As the hairdresser notices that he has contracted the disease so the angelfish begin to harbor a fungus that affects the other fish. Bellatin obviously has a brilliant mind in that he gives us this story. The claustrophic nature of the salon or terminal reflects the density of the story and makes us all too aware that death will come for us all.

Bellatin is a major innovator in contemporary fiction finally getting attention in the States with the release of this novella and a recent feature in the NY Times. This is only his second work to be released in the States, but he is well-known in the Spanish-speaking world and Europe for his clever, subversive short works. Readers may find bits reminiscent of Cesar Aira, the Argentinian novelist (or at times Roberto Bolano). Beauty Salon is narrated in a direct way by a salon owner who has transformed his shop into a Terminal, a place where the dying are tended to in their final days. While the city, epidemic, and time of the novel are left vague, it feels distinctly temporary and familiar. In many ways the epidemic is reminiscent of the experiences of earlier HIV/AIDS patients, being rejected by hospitals, treated like lepers, and left to their friends and communities to take care of them when even their families at times reject them. In fact, the narrator is a transvestite who only takes in men as part of his rigid system of rules for the Terminal. Detaching himself from the suffering around him, the narrator embraces taking care of the fish in aquariums that he has set up in the shop. For him, the fish provide a deeper connection to the world around him than the patients he has taken in and works to stay estranged from. Bellatin's style is clear, subtle and direct. The richness of his prose is not immediately apparent in the simplicity of the sentences. Eventually though the book won me over and surprised me with its intelligence and immediacy. Since the setting and circumstances are not fully revealed, Beauty Shop remains allegorical. The story feels timeless in its exploration of a man focused on the creation of beauty who finds himself surrounding by ugliness and suffering. I have to confess that when I heard this book described as an allegory, I feared it would feel remote, cold, and uninviting. I was excited to find my assumption was dead wrong - this book draws you in, strikes you viscerally, and feels vitally familiar.