The Logbook of Beauty

Beauty is a reason to live when the present moment is darkened by fear.

On the same day a child in a Finnish school shoots their classmates, the narrator of the novel opens their old diaries for the first time in over thirty years. The pages are filled with pain, sorrow, and a sense of insecurity. Why does the narrator not remember what once happened to them?

Only when a friend living in Afghanistan is placed in danger does the remembering begin. The narrator tries to understand the consequences of their experiences and to find connection with people living in different parts of the world—those whom violence touches now.

As a child, the diary writer made lists of beautiful things to remind themselves that beauty is a reason to believe in the future when the present is darkened by pain. Guided by this idea, they walk with a Ukrainian acquaintance to places where people in Kyiv cherish beauty and the desire for life in the midst of war.

The Logbook of Beauty brings history into human scale in the spirit of works by Svetlana Alexievich and Annie Ernaux. This ambitious novel, built on the tension between personal memory, documentary material, and the wars of the present moment, makes visible the intergenerational traces of violence and humanity’s shared ability to nurture beauty as a force of resistance. “I’m sure of this: beauty will overcome pain,” the child writes in the diary.