Published in 2022
400 pages
Barbara Bourland is a novelist living in Baltimore. Her third novel, The Force of Such Beauty, follows a retired Olympic athlete who marries a prince. Bourland’s novels use imaginative escapism to process an emotional condition (in chronological order: I’ll Eat When I’m Dead, the compulsion to control our appearance; Fake Like Me, the worry that we aren’t good enough; The Force of Such Beauty, the desire to be special) endemic to contemporary women’s lives. Cast in the mold of universal literary forms—the detective story, the thriller, the fairytale—they weave in and out of their genres, until the plot turns inside out and the narrative, upon reflection, appears to be something else entirely.
What is this book about?
One sunny afternoon in an idyllic kingdom by the sea, a princess named Caroline pretends to sleep. When her keepers strike up a card game, Caroline sneaks into her maid’s car, turns the key, and drives right out of the palace. Alone for the first time in years, she gets on the next flight—only to land in the waiting arms of her guards. As she’s forcibly escorted back to her marble prison, something in Caroline breaks for good. It’s not her first failed attempt, and it won’t be her last. Caroline suspects that she’ll never escape. But she might find a way to be free.
