Tiny Beautiful Things review: A tearjerker about love, sex and death

Tiny Beautiful Things.

Greg and Zanna watch a series that’s bigger than it looks.

SCORES

Tiny: Not really

Beautiful: Yes

SHE SAW

I asked Greg what Tiny Beautiful Things was about and he told me it was based on the book by Cheryl Strayed. “Oh, the Lean In lady?” I asked. “No, honey, that’s Sheryl Sandberg.” The pain of being married to someone who would mix up those two wildly different C/Sheryls - one a literary icon who’s studied under his idol George Saunders and one who’s on the Forbes’ billionaires list - was obvious in his withering tone.

The book is a collection of essays from Strayed’s Dear Sugar advice column for an online literary magazine. The series, which has been adapted by Liz Tigelaar (Little Fires Everywhere), diverges quite a lot from Strayed’s real life story but keeps, at its centre, the major life event that’s been omnipresent in all of Strayed’s books: her mother’s death. As is on trend at present, the show takes place over two timelines: The present day in which essayist Clare, 49, is offered the Dear Sugar column at a time when her marriage, work life and relationship with her teenage daughter are falling apart; and circa 25 years earlier when her mother died, quite suddenly, of lung cancer.

Kathryn Hahn plays Clare in the present day and is, as you would expect, fantastic. She balances pain and humour effortlessly and brings a heartbreaking realness to everything she does from Transparent to Wandavision. Sarah Pidgeon, who plays young Clare, is new to me and she is exceptional also. She mimics Hahn’s mannerisms brilliantly, seamlessly bridging the believability gap between their only vaguely similar appearance.

Each episode uses a letter to Dear Sugar as a framing device and thematic mirror for the onscreen action. It calls into question the nature of advice and who is qualified or worthy to give it. Clare’s life is a mess, yet she is able to provide counsel to others who are in situations quite different from her own. It speaks to a shared humanity that I found quite moving.

It’s a heartbreaking show and should probably come with a trigger warning for anyone who has lost a parent at a young age. Strayed was left broken by her mother’s death and became a heroin addict in the aftermath. I sobbed regularly.

As Greg and I emerge from the haze of early parenthood and can see the treacherous waters of teen parenting on the horizon, Tiny Beautiful Things was not a comforting watch. In fact, it’s probably “too real” for Greg but I will be seeing this through, hoping desperately that some of the advice woven through will help me navigate the road ahead better than Clare has. I just hope none of it is to lean in.

HE SAW

There is now a well-worn path in the career trajectory of a certain kind of American writer that takes them from producing quirky online articles and essays for literary fringe websites, to writing bestselling memoiristic non-fiction, to having their work adapted for the screen. This looks from the outside to be a classic rags-to-riches story: Brilliantly talented writer goes from trailer park-poor to spending their days lounging by the pool at their private resort in the Maldives.

This – the first part at least – is what happened to Cheryl Strayed. Not once but twice has she written New York Times bestsellers that have been made into big-budget screen productions. First was Wild and now there’s Tiny Beautiful Things, a Disney series based on her life and a collection of advice columns she wrote for The Rumpus.

Is she rich? The internet doesn’t say definitively but, in 2017, she was quoted as saying her publisher paid $400,000 for Wild, and when she got the advance it all went on the credit card debt she had accrued in writing it.

This matters because part of the reason I was interested in watching Tiny Beautiful Things was its implicit promise that if you’re talented and work hard and have a bit of luck, you too might be able to write some quirky essays you can parlay into memoiristic New York Times bestsellers which are chosen for Oprah’s book club and then sold to Reese Witherspoon, who turns them into hit movies and series, making you rich enough to pipe hot and cold running champagne directly into your kitchen AND bathroom.

The truth is that the “riches” part of the rags-to-riches story doesn’t exist, even for most successful writers whose books are made into successful movies. We live in a society that attaches great cultural value to writing, but very little money. Strayed has said she was on the verge of losing her house before selling Wild. That would be discouraging enough were she, at that stage, still a nobody tooling about on the literary internet, but the truth is that she had by then already sold a novel for US$100,000.

These might sound like enormous advances for a book, but when averaged out over the number of years it takes to write the average book, and after being subjected to expenses and agent’s fees, it’s not even an average wage. It’s a miracle anyone writes at all.

Tiny Beautiful Things is a powerful watch, compelling and evocative. As for the book, I can’t say. Never read it.

Tiny Beautiful Things is now streaming on Disney+