Beautyland

By Marie-Helene Bertino

Book Overview

A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Time, Elle, The Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Goodreads, WBEZ Chicago, Book Riot, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Women's World

A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
A Dakota Johnson x TeaTime Book Club Pick
An Esquire Best Science Fiction Book of All Time

"A perfect little polished garnet of a novel." --Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

"A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life." --Dakota Johnson, Bustle

From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374109281
• ISBN13: 9780374109288
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.7" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Surprising and delightful! I loved it!

This was a thoroughly unusual and delightful novel. It's the story of a girl who grows up, starting in the mid-1970s, believing herself to be an alien from a distant planet, responsible for reporting back to her people about life on earth. Her observations about human behavior and society are clear-eyed and astute—colored, of course, by the emotional and physical experiences she has growing up as the sensitive, intelligent daughter of a working class single mom. It's a marvelous premise and she is a tremendously likable heroine who, despite her belief that she is not human, consistently delivers a gorgeous and full-throated report on humanity. I loved it all.