I actually read this book a few years ago when it was first released, but I sometimes still go back and listen to it via audiobook.
Set in 1969, Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt follows sisters Charlotte and Lucy and their guardian, Iris, whose lives are forever changed when Lucy runs away with an older man. From that point forward, we see Lucy struggle with the isolation to what she initially believed was a fantasy, while Charlotte gets adjusted to young adulthood coping with the absence of her younger sister, and as Iris tends to her life, looking to the past and at the present and its family secrets.
I love a book with characters that make you reflect on life and the period their stories are set in. When I first read Cruel Beautiful World I was in my “1960s phase” when I was watching CNN’s docuseries The Sixties, still thinking about Mad Men a year after it aired its final season and while I was tearing through Jacqueline Susann’s books. It’s such an interesting period in time that was essentially our loss of innocence pivoting away from the decades before to an era of change. And I felt all of that with this book. It’s understated but poignant between the lines.
What is a book you often reread?
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