Book Review: Epic and Lovely

Reviewed by Grace Okubo

A piercing exploration of desire, detachment, and the dangerous comfort of familiar harm

Epic and Lovely is the story of a woman at the end of her life, penning a letter to her doctor; this letter serves as a confessional, a chronicle, and an explanation for her dying wish.

This woman, Nina Simone Blainey, writes with flippant detachment, recounting a series of disturbing and even horrific experiences in a cavalier manner. Her language exposes a fractured self-image: she has long believed she is undeserving of good things because she was born deformed, while simultaneously clinging to a conviction that she is entitled to them. This contradiction affects her choices, making her accept treatment she shouldn’t and defend behaviors she should run from. Her moral compass is broken, so her attitude swerves from resignation to entitlement, or from victimhood to agency.

The novel is fittingly set in Los Angeles, a city adept at masking its quiet rot and normalized wrongs with a polished veneer. The dialogue displays the elite education of its characters, which contradicts their surprising lack of wisdom. Against this backdrop, a community of people, united by their common ailment, the hopelessness of it, snobbishly arrogant toward the outside world, yet reluctant to extend grace to one another.

Through Nina’s testimony, we glimpse her parentage—a father absorbed in himself and his pseudo-world, a mother, fighting her low expectations for life with rare explosions of fierce self-worth. Tracy, her mother, tries and woefully fails to unshackle Nina from her self-imposed “expiry date,” all the while being unable to fully eviscerate herself from the powerful and abusive men to whom she has surrendered control.

Nina’s relationships are charged and difficult. There is a husband who treats her more as a function than a person. Then there is Cole, a fireball of provocation and devotion, inciting tension and needless rage, yet somehow convinces her he does all in the service of his unconditional and unmatched sacred love. Cole’s intoxicating presence is marked by moments that suggest his subdued violence. Even the doctor, Susan Chen, to whom she is writing, is not spared scrutiny as she often reflects on how she chooses to trust her despite past breaches of trust between them.

The book is about a mother whose dying wish is to create a better world for her daughter, and she does it by describing the world she comes from and what she hates about that world so that her daughter doesn’t inherit the disadvantage and shame she grew up with.

The book does a great job of depicting its characters, especially its protagonist: a person who uses the pursuit of pleasure to mask the pain of circumstances they had no control over. Shocking moments filled with bewildering choices are followed by mind-numbing reactions that keep you reading, then a climactic event that, in any other story, might provoke transformation—but here is met with the same strange detachment. It’s a world where needless pain could have been avoided if the characters had listened, extended compassion, or been bold enough to step away from harm, choices they had but rarely took.

While the pervasive detachment in the book’s storytelling style lends it strength, it is also its greatest challenge. Shocking moments are described with clinical objectivity, which may leave some readers craving a clearer emotional anchor. Notwithstanding, the story cleverly explores how love can conceal harm, how privilege can coexist with despair, and the simultaneity of entitlement and low self-esteem within a person.

Epic and Lovely thrives with its morally complex characters and their layered relationships. In addition to a surprising storyline, there are also nuggets of common-sense wisdom throughout the book, hidden within its deliberate detachment. Even in the book’s final pages, you’ll be questioning the choices of its characters and reflecting on the quiet compromises we make in our own lives.

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