LISTEN: Frances Whiting on The Best Kind of Beautiful

For Frances Whiting, a columnist for the Courier Mail with a career that spans over 20 years, fiction writing is a kind of magical exercise where she gets to inhabit lives that she has secretly always wanted to live – the life of a musician, for instance.

In her second novel, The Best Kind of Beautiful, she does just that. It’s a gorgeous and whimsical story about a famous musical family called the Saint Claire Swingers and their hit Christmas song “Santa Was a Jazz Cat”. As you might imagine, this song is an absolute earworm of a tune that’s made life hell for the younger members of the family (think Bill Nighy’s rendition of “Christmas is All Around” from Love Actually … but with more jazz).

Former band member and mutinous daughter Florence Saint Claire now likes to pretend that her career with the Saint Claire Swingers never happened. She spends her working days planting native trees alongside her good friend Albert Flowers instead, while dreaming her own private dreams. But what unfolds is a story where two people who thought they knew each other discover that there’s a lot more to a friendship than meets the eye.

“At its core, I think it’s about the way in which we all hide particular parts of ourselves, for various reasons,” says Frances. “I don’t think there’s a human being on the planet that doesn’t do that, but beyond that I have quite a firm belief that that’s the actual part of us that’s probably the most beautiful part.”

While it’s a funny and warm-hearted book about family and friendship, The Best Kind of Beautiful is also a book about vulnerability and just how powerful it can be when we let our guard down with another person – a lesson Florence will come to learn as the story progresses.

“I just think that we all really often hide the most beautiful part of ourselves, which is always I think the vulnerable part of ourselves,” says Frances. “I think there’s a lot of beauty in vulnerability.”

Frances came to Booktopia to sign some copies of The Best Kind of Beautiful and to sit down for a podcast with Ben Hunter and myself. Listen to our chat below and grab a signed copy of her book here!

The Best Kind of Beautiful

by Frances Whiting

Award-winning journalist and author Frances Whiting brings her renowned warmth and empathy to this witty and gentle novel about bringing out the best in each other.

Florence Saint Claire is a loner. Albert Flowers is a social butterfly. Good friends who think they know each other. But, somewhere between who they are, and who people think they are, lies The Best Kind of Beautiful...

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About the Contributor

Olivia Fricot

Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.

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