Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life

and a few of the great big, beautiful thoughts it inspired...

Last week, a friend from my writing group shared a personality quiz in our group chat: Read Your Color shows you the types of books you prefer, based on the emotional reaction you crave from them.

A bunch of us took it, posted our results, and had a good chuckle about how many oranges, purples and reds there were. (We’re a speculative fiction crew, so it was no surprise we all gravitated towards world-building, adventure and being mind-blown over, say… non-fiction articles).

But as though I’m living in a fiction novel myself, the theme’s been reemerging in daily life ever since. “What shapes our feeling of the world?” at least three conversations got me considering, and “Who do we, day in and day out, choose to share our mind with?” The questions kept being sparked from interactions I have, as well as my current read, Emily Henry’s Great Big, Beautiful Life.

On Wednesday night, during my son’s soccer practice, I got to talking with another dad. The conversation was compelling in some ways, the type that sweeps across grand subjects like analyzing corporate greed, speculating on potential life on other planets (in case you missed it, they recently found an exoplanet strong evidence of life!), discussing whether evolution, by nature, leads to living organisms being selfish (as argued in Richard Dawkin’s book, “The Selfish Gene”. And these are all ideas I love pondering, that get me amped up about the mysterious forces at work in the world. But the thing was, his take was distinctly darker than mine (aside from my prediction that World War III is eminent…I suppose that bit of doom and gloom was my own contribution).

Still, the rest of the evening, I felt kind of heavy. As I explained it to my husband over dinner, I’d visited some cool corners of the universe in the conversation, sure. But it wasn’t a world I have much hope for…and certainly isn’t a world I felt great about having brought my kids into.

The feeling lingered through the dishes, doing bedtime for the boys, feeding the guinea pig…until I snuggled up with the next chapter of Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life. Because the thing is, this very phenomenon is one of the book’s themes, too. Henry’s guarded character, Hayden, explicitly names it when talking to Alice, our heart-forward, optimistic heroine:

“I think you live in a world that’s more interesting than the one most people live in,” he says, and just as my heart starts to sink with disappointment, with a kind of loneliness, he adds, “and I wish I could live in it too.”

As Henry must already realize, the sharing of worldviews is a huge part of what choosing companions is about. Can the realities you and your partners/friends/family inhabit coexist? And if they are starkly different, do you value entering theirs?

But perhaps as significant as significant others are the books we read.

Existential dread is a legitimate response to what’s happening in the world. It isn’t, however, a lens I find particularly invigorating. So, while I value delving into that thinking for a book or two, I prefer going there for camping trips, not to live.

Also, I don’t think it’s True, capital “T.” Or, at least, not “truer” than any other lens. Which brings me to another great theme in Great Big Beautiful Life.

“There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth,” Henry writes early on in the novel. The two main characters are journalists, and in her research, Alice searches for the most truthful story—for the woman she’s writing a biography of, her sister, herself. While I appreciate her nuanced take on truth, Alice seems to believe the writing can, eventually, get her there, which is where I, perhaps, disagree.

Language, the stories we tell, are an amazing medium we can sculpt our versions of reality with. And obviously, as a writer and reader, I put great faith into their power. But they are not reality itself. Also, I don’t believe any one voice can depict what’s “real” on its own. Collectively, our words and stories woven together, perhaps, come closer to the objective. But to actually touch it? No. Not even then.

Still, as individual people living our little lives, what a gift books are! What portals! Through words, we get to glimpse inside (and from inside) someone else’s mind. And while I find value stepping into any author’s perspective, there are some I crave returning to like a bird migrating home.

Five novels in, I definitely notice patterns to Henry’s plotting of books. Her type of romance novel has the “meet-cute,” the family-baggage-character development device, the obstacle between lovers, and the catharsis of them coming together. But what I come back to her books for (in addition to the hilarious characters and poetic prose) is the world she writes. The reality she describes is one I want to inhabit.

Henry’s world is consistently one where people’s passions matter, where almost everyone is generous and flawed and funny, where love pervades their choices and beauty surrounds them, even when they might not look up to see it. Not to mention she explores cool ideas like the subjective nature of reality, while making me laugh.

So yeah. Her “worldview” is not necessarily truer than some op-ed on the end of modern civilization. But her books paint a reality I’ll immerse my mind in whenever possible, because just as I mingle mindsets with my husband and friends, I’m happy to linger in hers longer-term.

Within Henry’s books’ warm embrace, I explore and learn and grow. Reading them makes me feel more inclined to be generous and see the generosity in others. Perhaps the Read Your Color test is onto something, and I often prefer stories that defy formula and blow my mind with their big ideas, but Henry’s books make this planet a better place, and that’s revolutionary in its own way.