Ugly Beauty by Sarah Zee

It's fall, 2001. Bethany Schechter from Brooklyn is away at college in Philadelphia. As the world lurches painfully into the twenty-first century, Bethany remains dedicated to advancing her understanding of it... and delaying her future. Soon, she finds herself pulled in all directions by a phalanx of captivating men. Each loves a different Bethany, and each offers a different future. Grateful for the struggle, Bethany learns to improvise over the many modes of love, knowing she will only ever become what she has always been.In Ugly Beauty, Sarah Zee explores the tensions of art and sex, love and duty, and the immediacy of life versus the timelessness of a people. Her second novel continues her ongoing meditation on the kinetics of love, how we can give ourselves fully in the moment without compromising who we are, how experience makes us richer while we remain more than the sum of events.