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A review by jessdekkerreads
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
5.0
*kindly sent to me by @fsgbooks and out on 1/16/23
THE STORY: This is a unique story written in fragments about a young woman named Adina, born to a single woman on Earth, while simultaneously humans have sent Voyager 1 to space, which contains Earth’s golden record. Adina quickly comes to realize she is different, she is other, and eventually begins communicating via fax machine about life on Earth among humans, with her extraterrestrial relatives that exist on a faraway planet which she knows as her home. I love Adina’s wit, I love the way she observes the world, the way she observes humans and humanity. She’s my new favorite fictional character.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND: The portrayal of girlhood is so tender and honest, as well as the authentic exploration of the push and pull of a mother daughter relationship.
Bertino also gives us beautiful philosophical musings on grief and humanity. She shows us what it means to feel lonely, always longing for home. What it means to feel alien, to feel homesick.
“Humans want to find aliens so they feel less alone. They don’t know there is nothing lonelier than an alien.” (pg. 241)
This story reminds us that we have this one fragile human life, and how special it is that we get to love, to love others, to love things, whether it’s romantic or platonic, we simply get to love, and how lucky we are.
“The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon. ... To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads—what could be more human? One life span is too short to try to love everything she wants to try to love, do everything she loves as many times as she can.” (pg 320 & 321)
I was completely enchanted by this story, by Adina and I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.
THE STORY: This is a unique story written in fragments about a young woman named Adina, born to a single woman on Earth, while simultaneously humans have sent Voyager 1 to space, which contains Earth’s golden record. Adina quickly comes to realize she is different, she is other, and eventually begins communicating via fax machine about life on Earth among humans, with her extraterrestrial relatives that exist on a faraway planet which she knows as her home. I love Adina’s wit, I love the way she observes the world, the way she observes humans and humanity. She’s my new favorite fictional character.
WHAT YOU’LL FIND: The portrayal of girlhood is so tender and honest, as well as the authentic exploration of the push and pull of a mother daughter relationship.
Bertino also gives us beautiful philosophical musings on grief and humanity. She shows us what it means to feel lonely, always longing for home. What it means to feel alien, to feel homesick.
“Humans want to find aliens so they feel less alone. They don’t know there is nothing lonelier than an alien.” (pg. 241)
This story reminds us that we have this one fragile human life, and how special it is that we get to love, to love others, to love things, whether it’s romantic or platonic, we simply get to love, and how lucky we are.
“The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon. ... To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads—what could be more human? One life span is too short to try to love everything she wants to try to love, do everything she loves as many times as she can.” (pg 320 & 321)
I was completely enchanted by this story, by Adina and I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.