Beauty That Hurts
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Lovell does not set out to shock readers with sensationalised tales of torture and brutality; he retells a handful of individual accounts from amongst the brutal tortured reality that was Guatemala for at least three and a half decades. It is impossible not to be jolted by each horrific story, and while this may not be his sole purpose for recounting these events, neither is this shock achieved unwittingly. The reader is hooked in horrified disbelief Lovell creates a desire in his audience to discover what possible circumstances could foster these events. With this powerful beginning he enables himself to then make a detailed presentation of the surrounding political situation complete with historical background without losing the interest of his readers. Emotive and informative, it is perhaps the best substitute for a traditional text book that I have ever encountered.
Noticeably academic in style it is perhaps not the type of book I would read for pleasure. It is a far cry from a poetic and free-flowing novel through which to escape reality quite the opposite in fact. Lovell forces grim reality upon the reader page after page and as such it is a very thought provoking book brimming with revealing information on a country that (I think) along with much of the western world, I previously only held a vague conception of.
In some sources "A Beauty that Hurts" is described as an epic ("A Beauty", 2003). However, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2003) an epic is a poetic narrative of historical heroes...