Book Review: "Beautiful Things" by Hunter Biden
5/5 - a promise in a letter to his late brother...
I remember when I first heard about this book and everyone was recommending it to me, but at the time I really just could not afford it as there were already many books on my ‘to be read’ list and ‘Wishlist’ and any other list you can think of. I was pretty up in arms about it because everyone was reading it and discussing it at the time and I was feeling a little left out. When I finally did come around to buying it, I would have it on my Kindle purely because it was a little bit cheaper. I think I was actually pretty thankful because everyone had stopped talking about it and things were returning to normal. I was not coming across the book every three scrolls of Instagram, not seeing reviews of it all over Twitter and not being constantly advertised it. I felt like I was reading it in silence again and for me, that is the best way to read. Hunter Biden’s autobiography is an amazing achievement of memoir. Obviously, his last name thrust his book into the spotlight once it was published and of course, during this time there were many people already talking about his drug use, his bad habits and blaming them on various things they did not know about. But this is the book that clears that all up.
An emotional autobiography that starts off with a chapter on his older brother’s final days on earth, Hunter Biden explains his emotional grasp on Beau. For those of us that remember, Beau Biden died of quite an aggressive cancer of the brain at the age of forty-six. Hunter’s explanation of his final days is a passionate love letter to his brother and alongside that, he also takes us through the tragedy that killed his mother and baby sister in a car accident. Yes, we start off the book by diving right into the most upsetting things we are going to encounter - or so we thought. The downward spiral technique comes from these events and obviously, tragic as they are and famous as the family is, made Hunter Biden’s decision-making process clouded with the thought of his father having to ‘damage control’ for him. In this, Hunter Biden seems to feel like he has ‘failed’ his brother and within the timeline of drugs and alcohol, decides to get the help even if it were to take him a lifetime.
It is beautifully written considering that everything in it is practically the truth. Hunter Biden does not dress up or glamorise addiction in any way, in fact if anything he actually releases it from its horrid stigma of being done by the ‘poor and degenerate’. He also owns up to his mistakes, misdeeds and problems instead of seeking to blame them on any one particular thing, though the reader can tell that he has been through and seen his fair share of tragedy ever since he was a young child. I think alongside all of this, he tells us about his family having politics in their blood and his want to better himself that comes from a combination of not wanting to create another tragedy and in order to fulfil his brother’s dying wish of ‘beautiful things’ - I think that not only is he telling us the grand truth but he is also inviting us to help him solve the problem.
In conclusion to all of this, there is definitely a narrative here that we need to pay attention to because not every single president has a squeaky clean pristine and polished family. Some of them have painfully real families that are hanging on to each other by a series of terrifying events and tragedies.
About the Creator
Annie Kapur
200K+ Reads on Vocal.
English Lecturer
🎓Literature & Writing (B.A)
🎓Film & Writing (M.A)
🎓Secondary English Education (PgDipEd) (QTS)
📍Birmingham, UK
Comments
There are no comments for this story
Be the first to respond and start the conversation.