You know how I love a quirky little book, and Marie-Helene Bertino has given us our first five-star quirk-fest of the year.
“Beautyland” is the story of Adina Giorno, a girl whose life begins in 1977, just as Voyager 1 is launched into space. Adina lives in Philadelphia, but she believes she is otherworldly — an alien life form from a faraway planet who was sent to take notes about life on Earth and report them to her superiors.
When Adina’s mother finds an old fax machine on the side of the road, she envisions it as “maybe a planter!” and sets it up in her daughter’s bedroom. Before long, Adina is sending transmissions to her extraterrestrial family and getting responses back.
What follows is a tender and intensely human story. Adina experiences adolescent drama, peer pressure, friendship and heartbreak, all the while recording her observations on everyday life. “When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching,” Adina writes, “human beings did not go for Fig Newtons or caramel — foods that are silent — but popcorn, the loudest sound on earth.” (Adina has a particular aversion to mouth noises.)
She sees things clearly and feels them deeply, and her correspondence is tinged with an overwhelming loneliness. Adina struggles to fit in and figure things out, and while she tries to maintain an objective distance from those around her, life manages to suck her in anyway. The novel ends up being a love letter to humanity and our universe, in all its staggering and spectacular weirdness. And Bertino’s quirky character defines what it truly means to be human.
