Great Big Beautiful Life

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

The novel begins with Alice saying, “There are always three versions of [a story]: yours, mine, and the truth” (1), foregrounding the subjectivity of storytelling. Through Margaret’s traumatic story, Henry examines the conflict between public myth and private reality, revealing that truth is complex and often elusive. While Alice starts with the intention to write a biography, it evolves into exploring the narrative shaped by the media about the Ives family. The Ives patriarchs crafted public personas to protect their legacy but were nearly devoured by the systems they created. Thus, Margaret learned to perform a version of herself dictated by others. This led to a life devoid of privacy and her eventual rejection of the spotlight.

The novel challenges the reliability of what people read and hear in the news, especially when powerful interests curate those narratives. Henry shows how truth can be distorted, edited, or hidden to preserve a particular image. This leads to questioning the authority of public narratives and a more thoughtful consideration of the humanity behind the headline. As Alice and Margaret build trust, Margaret begins to reveal her trauma and the powerlessness she felt in being defined by stories she didn’t author.