The novel follows a pair of siblings — Danny and his older sister, the beautiful, protective Maeve — growing up midcentury outside Philadelphia. From a Review in the NYTimes
Of course she was beautiful. Would we care about her if she was not? Would we care less?
I was reading this review one day and it just suddenly hit me– that casual, insidious, sneaky little insert there: “beautiful”. Danny’s “beautiful” older sister Maeve. And if you think I’m after something about sexism, forget it. It’s the word “beautiful”. It can apply to anything.
Maeve’s fate in this book, we are told, is unkind. Because she loves her brother and mothers him and protects him and, it is suggested, sacrifices her own future for him. So why would we care if she is beautiful? I mean that seriously. If the objective is not to engage you in some kind of complicity about desire for Maeve, or Maeve’s desirability– why bother? We could have a story about a homely girl who realizes she’s never going to be lucky in love and sacrifices something that doesn’t seem all that valuable in the first place: her romantic prospects.