A work of rigorous and lavish overthinking.

Ambitious.

A magpie’s nest of research and anecdotes about the objects that attract her, the book examines the tension she feels between wanting the things she wants—clothes, cosmetics, home goods—and acknowledging the murkier story of how some of those items were made and marketed.

Surprising.

Multifaceted.

The book is a mash-up of history, science and politics; business, marketing and memoir. Which is to say, Kelleher is inventing her own genre as she goes, layering research and interviews with her own first-person account.

Kelleher writes candidly about her personal experiences as a home and design writer, which involved crafting descriptive write-ups.

Through personal revelation and scholarly research, Kelleher’s engrossing essays cogently explore the unsettling dichotomy between the precious and the problematic, the seedy and the sublime to vividly reveal the pleasures and perils in pursuit of ideal beauty..

Ruminations on beautiful things with dark origins.

Grimly illuminating.