Beautyland

Adina is (maybe) an alien sent to Earth to report about conditions here. She is in many ways a typical girl, raised by a single mother, struggling with poverty and with typical teenager problems, later struggling to make her way in New York City. But she is “activated” as an alien after a fall on her head when she is four. Thereafter, she regularly reports back to her “superiors” on “Planet Cricket Rice” (its untranslatable name in the aliens’ language sounds like a cricket hopping onto a plate of rice) on an old fax machine her mother salvaged from the neighbors’ trash.

Whether or not she is, in fact, an alien is ambiguous, and though it’s central to her identity, it’s mostly besides the point. The real point is her show more careful observation of the human condition as she experiences it. She feels things deeply, loves her best friend and her little dog dearly, and her report on being human is funny and sad and wistful and entirely worth reading.

I listened to the audiobook, and Andi Arndt would have been Adina’s voice in my head if I’d read it on paper. show less

When they are in pain, human beings sing "Amazing Grace." It has transcended religious, cultural, and racial context and is about the basest of human cultures, which is suffering. The more we live, the more we lose, the more we believe we are lost. The song says, if you remain elegant you will be found. It might take a while. You may have to chill in misery for longer than you feel is necessary. Hang in there and you will receive grace. Grace is unmerited kindness. Unmerited because you are a wretch which is a synonym for human which is a synonym for flawed. Grace, a place to store loss.

Adina is a somewhat socially awkward girl who pretends to be an alien as a way of coping. Or Adina is an alien, sent from some faraway planet to observe show more and report. Which of these two things is the case is unclear, but also unimportant in this lovely novel about a life that looks ordinary but, of course, is as unique and remarkable as any human life.

Adina is born in 1977 in Philadelphia to a single mother who struggles to support them both, so they shop the clearance racks of Beautyland, a discount store, and live in a row house across from the Auto World. Adina makes a best friend, and then another in her best friend's brother. She tries to fit in with the popular girls, she discovers she enjoys acting, she graduates and tries to figure out her next step. As she lives her life, she uses an old fax machine stored in her bedroom to communicate with those who sent her to this remote planet.

I liked this quiet novel about Adina. Her point of view was off-beat and her observations were often funny or illuminating. Adina's true identity remains open to interpretation, but at heart this is a straightforward novel about a life. show less

"Their apartment comprises the bottom floor of a two-unit brick building attached to another brick building, and so on, et cetera-ing down the highway."

"'Fine,' her mother said in her "not fine" voice and carried the fax machine to Adina's room where it claimed most of her bureau's top."

"It is impossible to be unhappy on a swing."

"'Listen, Adina, your father is gone. This is one of those good and bad things. There are so many hard times you may as well celebrate them,' she says."

"They cannot afford to be smart with money."

"Human beings don't like when other humans seem happy. A reply arrives the next morning: We are sorry."

"I require speech lessons and corrective lenses and most likely teeth braces. I am an expensive extraterrestrial. show more The reply: Designed to appear normal."

"She reads down a stack of library books..."

"One holy, airless August afternoon, Adina and Dominic are stunned silent by the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot."

"It is impossible to be unhappy when holding a bouquet of balloons."

"Endings are hard."

"By speaking another person's words on stage, Adina has connected to so many humans."

"The ego of the human male is by far the most dangerous aspect of human society. This has been well-documented."

"Things Yolanda K. yells: You are a human being! What is happening to you is real, don't go into autopilot! Every movement has an intention and every intention has a purpose! Biceps all day! Seek out ways to say yes to your body! Start with the yes and work backward! Yes to green tea! Yes to 10 more! If it doesn't feel right, use that No button! You all have one. Your button is a Hell No button, Marlene, I know. The only word we don't use is almost! Never almost do it! Almost Village is close to Nowhere Land!"

"It is called integrating one's shadow self. Instead of avoiding a fear, you move toward it."

"When someone dies, where does the way they eat egg rolls go?"

"Every human dies. But the bad news is that every day they act like they don't know they're alive. They lie or behave inconsiderately or cheat. Each one is a little death. Humans experience many little deaths before the final one."

"One day the tears, perhaps sensing their pointlessness, halt."

"Yolanda K. says, There is no reason to be anything other than optimistic."

"The word yet: because it allows you to believe more than one thing."

"She was American, in that she rarely traveled."

Beautyland is a tender, wildly original exploration of what it means to be human, told through the eyes of an alien sent to observe us via a fax machine. Bertino balances poignant reflections on grief and alienation with laugh-out-loud observations about Earth’s absurdities, creating a story that is both heartbreaking and incredibly wise. It is a book steeped in the bittersweet knowledge that "endings are hard," and that humanity, for all its cruelty and expense, is a fascinating spectacle. show less

"Humans want to find aliens so they can feel less alone. They don't know there is nothing lonelier than an alien."

Adina Giorno is born to single mother Therese in 1977 at the exact moment of the Voyager launch. From the time of her birth, she is aware that she is from another planet, that she is different. At age 4, she is "activated," and from then on she sends reports to her home planet every evening by Fax describing various aspects of life on Earth. In her dreams she is visited by beings from her home planet to help "educate" her.

We follow her through her childhood to adulthood when she gets a job and moves to Brooklyn. Ultimately a friend convinces her to publish some of her faxed reports about life on Earth, and a media frenzy of show more sorts engulfs the reclusive Adina and controversy as to whether Adina is actually an alien surrounds her.

But be warned! This book is not science fiction. Adina is a very real person. She is a person who feels alone and apart, and she is longing for connection, as are we all. This was a moving read, and it is a book I recommend.

3 1/2 stars show less

What is it like to pretend to be human? If you met an alien disguising themselves, could you tell the difference? Or would the self-doubt, the insecurities, the misunderstandings, and the futile grasping for connection be the perfect cover.

If not for the magic of the wonderful faxes that young Adina receives back from her homeworld, and eventually the genuine contact she makes with her people, Beautyland would be different book - perhaps one about delusion and the fragility of the human psyche. But with Adina's genuine alienness confirmed for the readers from early on, the novel instead becomes a heartbreaking mirror asking us what we've done to be worthy of the universe today. Because the answer must almost always be, not enough.

The title felt a bit gratuitous to me, but then I thought, what would I title this novel? I have no idea. There are moments that read like a charming coming-of-age tale, others that twist your heart as our human-ness is witnessed and performed by Adina, and still others that serve up whimsical nostalgia from the late 70s, spanning from a famous moment on The Price is Right to Voyager's gold-plated time capsule phonograph record. It turns out the whimsy is deeper, after all, especially as Adina struggles with homesickness and trying to belong, and then experiences the deep grief of loss. Similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, Bertino's novel made me care about Adina more than her origin story, and I often forgot that there was an show more element of fantasy/sci-fi here. Part of this is due to the dry, but not unfeeling, delivery of the protagonist. Adina has an element of an "Everyman" (and yes, I'll use the male dominant term to connect specifically to its 15th-century reference) to her--we are Adina, if we choose to step back and look. What a gift to be able to see ourselves through her eyes, to laugh at our silliness, to cry at our cruelty, to empathize with our pain. show less

At the same time as the Voyager I launch in 1977, Adina is born to a working-class single mother in Philadelphia. Adina is different from other children in that she's actually an alien. She lives the life of a human reporting what she learns to the others on her home planet through a fax machine. Stretching from the 1970s to close to the present day, Beautyland is the story of Adina's life through all the struggles and joys an ordinary human might experience. It's beautifully written with Adina's observations on the mundane and the profound both fascinating. This book works if it's a science fiction story about an actual alien or if it's a metaphor for a human's isolation and alienation from others.