“How to understand why we do what we do, or tolerate what we tolerate, or love who we love.”
Named for a concept from the Quran where giving charity or lending to others for the sake of Allah is described as a beautiful loan (Christianity and Judaism have similar concepts), Mary Costello’s A Beautiful Loan (W.W. Norton 2026) is a beautiful book about a woman who is either a true chameleon, a doormat, or Camus’s Meursault. Had the novel been any longer, my patience for our narrator would have snapped.
When Anna Hughes is 19, she meets the much older Peter Gallagher at a pub. When he speaks Irish to her, she is immediately smitten. She quickly becomes obsessed with the older man, molding herself to be what he wants and allowing him to treat her like trash. He tells her he loves her one single time in a relationship that spans over two decades. I hate him.
Later, she meets Karim. She fancies herself in love with him, a connection forged because she loves Camus, and they are both from Algeria. She molds herself again, converting to Islam to connect with him more. He’s not as bad as Peter, but I can’t say he is a prize either.
In the blink of an eye, 25 years have passed and Anna is reminiscing as to how she ended up where she has.
The writing is poetic and beautiful, haunting and intimate. Anna is gorgeously rendered, but it’s the writing that makes this the novel it is.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 