Beauty Salon Paperback – July 1, 2009

For a book less than 100 pages, I cannot believe how much of an emotional reaction it got out of me. It was definitely worth buying. It helped me shape my perspective more, towards life and my own mortality. I would recommend it to anyone, whether they too are Latino or part of the LGBT community or not, it was a great read. Heavy and full of emotion.

BEAUTY SALON, a novella by the Mexican writer Mario Bellatin and translated into English by Kurt Hollander, is a sad but ultimately life-affirming story told by an unnamed narrator who has converted his beauty salon, “Salon to the Stars,” into a hospice called the Terminal for men in the last stages of a horrific disease. Although the narrator never uses the word “AIDS ” it is obvious from his description of the sufferers that this is the awful disease that afflicts these individuals. He has rigid rules for this hospice: sufferers must be literally on their last legs, no lovers of the sick are allowed to visit them, no women with this disease are admitted and no crucifixes adorn the walls of the Terminal. There are no prayers offered up for the sick, and the Sisters of Charity are not welcome on the premises. Additionally the narrator has removed all the mirrors that used to adorn the salon. Even though he has become accustomed to seeing the dying men, he doesn’t want them to have to see themselves in the last stages of their illness.When the narrator had his salon, he had aquariums with exotic fish to make the shop more beautiful. Or as he says: “just the thing to make the place special.” He keeps some fish after he converts the salon into the home for these sick individuals. He compares the fish that are difficult to keep alive with the dying men.As awful as conditions were for AIDS sufferers in the first years of the epidemic in the U. S., these men dying as well as those who did not get a place in the Terminal fare much worse if that’s possible. And as grim as this little story is, we have to admire the narrator for taking care of his brothers just as gay men throughout America in their own quiet ways became unsung heroes as they cared for their friends and lovers. And if you want to put a name and face on a real-life hero, read STREET ZEN, the biography of Issan Dorsey, who went from a drag queen (the narrator at one time dressed and went into the streets to pick up men) and drug abuser to a Zen Buddhist who opened Maitri Hospice for people with AIDS in San Francisco. Sometimes life imitates art.

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.

I have only read Beauty Salon in Spanish, so I can't comment upon this translation as such, but it is a powerful and strange story, which I heartily recommend. I would also like to correct Booklist's statement that this is Bellatin's first appearance in English. It is not. "Chinese Checkers: Three Fictions" (which I translated) has been available right here at Amazon since 2007, or maybe even 2006. Chinese Checkers