What to read, watch, and listen to if you lovedThe First Beautiful Thing
Paolo Virzì · Film · 2010
If you loved The First Beautiful Thing, start with My Brilliant Friend (Saverio Costanzo, 2018) — a series on the same thread. Below: 4 books, 4 series and 2 podcasts, each matched to The First Beautiful Thing across media.
You were drawn to the way The First Beautiful Thing balances the messy, painful realities of family life with a nostalgic, cinematic tenderness.
Books on the same thread
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · Book · 1972
Shares a thread with The First Beautiful Thing: Coming-of-Age.
If the strained mother-child dynamics in The First Beautiful Thing resonated with you, this novel captures a similarly intense and painful unraveling of identity through complex family relationships.
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann · Book · 1986
Explores: Obsession, Mortality, Beauty.
The First Beautiful Thing explores the weight of beauty standards, and this novella offers a profound, psychological meditation on the obsession with an idealized, remote form of human beauty.
Norwegian Wood (ノルウェイの森)
Haruki Murakami · Book · 1987
Shares 2 threads with The First Beautiful Thing: Nostalgia, Coming-of-Age.
Like The First Beautiful Thing, this story uses the backdrop of youth and loss to examine how grief and nostalgia shape the trajectory of a person's adult life.
Best, First, and Last
Amy T. Matthews · Book · 2024
Explores: intergenerational relationships, family dynamics, divorce.
This novel mirrors the intergenerational family tensions found in The First Beautiful Thing, focusing on how women navigate personal identity and divorce amidst messy, complicated domestic dynamics.
Series on the same thread
My Brilliant Friend
Saverio Costanzo · Series · 2018
Explores: Female Friendship, Childhood, Memory.
The First Beautiful Thing excels at tracing a life across decades, a structure you will find mirrored in this series as it maps a lifelong, complex female friendship.
La familia P. Luche
Eugenio Derbez · Series · 2002
Shares a thread with The First Beautiful Thing: Dysfunctional Family.
If you appreciated the dysfunctional family portrait in The First Beautiful Thing, this series amplifies those messy dynamics through a satirical, absurd lens that highlights daily domestic conflict.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Jenny Han · Series · 2022
Shares a thread with The First Beautiful Thing: Summer Romance.
The First Beautiful Thing captures the transformative power of a single summer, a feeling echoed here as family secrets and romantic growth define the protagonist's coming-of-age experience.
True Beauty
Series · 2020
Shares a thread with The First Beautiful Thing: Coming-of-Age.
This series explores the anxiety surrounding beauty standards that centralizes the mother figure in The First Beautiful Thing, offering a character-driven look at self-esteem and hidden identity.
Podcasts on the same thread
The Truth
The Truth · Podcast · 2026
Explores: human condition, experimental storytelling, moral ambiguity.
The First Beautiful Thing functions like a cinematic memory, and these short, immersive audio stories capture that same emotional depth, exploring the human condition through varied, poignant lenses.
This American Life
This American Life · Podcast · 2026
Explores: The human condition, Personal narrative, Social observation.
Much like the narrative structure of The First Beautiful Thing, these true stories unfold with a cinematic quality, blending big feelings and personal revelations to explore the human condition.
Keep exploring
Common questions
Is The First Beautiful Thing based on a specific time period?
The First Beautiful Thing follows the Michelucci family across several decades, starting in the nineteen-seventies and continuing through to the present day. The narrative structure captures the evolution of the family dynamics from the summer of 1971 until the modern era.
What event starts the story in The First Beautiful Thing?
The story of The First Beautiful Thing begins during the summer of 1971 at an annual beauty pageant held at a popular bathing establishment in Livorno. It is here that the central character, Anna, is unexpectedly crowned as the most beautiful woman.
Who are the central characters in The First Beautiful Thing?
The First Beautiful Thing centers on the Michelucci family. The primary focus is on the beautiful but lively and sometimes embarrassing mother, Anna, and her two children, Bruno and Valeria, as their lives unfold from the nineteen-seventies to the present day.
Does The First Beautiful Thing focus on a single character?
While The First Beautiful Thing tells the story of the entire Michelucci family, it centers specifically on Anna. She is depicted as a stunningly beautiful, lively, and frivolous mother whose actions and presence shape the experiences of her children, Bruno and Valeria, throughout the film.