Beautyland
Faculty - Creative Writing at The New School
Macmillan, 2024
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.