Beautyland

I found this book in my Libby app. The title and cover caught my eye. It's a unique sci-fi story told from the point of view of an alien. The narrator was superb. Highly recommended.

“She wonders what other rational human qualities she wrote off as extraterrestrial because of a human's tendency to other what they don't understand.”

I was happily reading this book… Curious and excited to know how it was going to end! And then it’s like the Author said “Well - I’m not going to provide you any resolution or explanation of the ending - just make it up yourself”. 3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️!

How disappoint!!

I started this book pretty into it, but things rapidly declined and it was a SLOG for me by the end. This is a kinda magical realist, kinda very very light sci-fi, but mostly mainstream fiction novel about a gen X woman, Adina, who is:
- From Philadelphia
- Weird
- Italian-American (WAHEEYYY BADABING - I can say this because I am also italo-americanaaaa)
- probably asexual
- probably autistic

And, importantly/centrally:
- AN ALIEN, who faxes her observations of humanity's foibles to “her superiors” on some distant planet

So this sounds like it'd be up my alley, but UGH I just found it so horribly TWEE and PRECIOUS and so painfully on-the-nose allllll the time. Like, yes, we all feel alienated sometimes, especially if we were the bottom of the totem pole in middle school high society. And yes, humans are quite silly, and this can be amusing and provoke affection. But! If we're going to be faxing aliens, can we PLEASE not be so incredibly basic in our observations?!! Namely, everything in this book felt like it perpetuated just a very specific, narrow, (American) pov that was completely unsurprising and not-new! For example:
- Rich people are mean
- Blond rich girls in school are mean
- NYC is the best city in the world
- Full of bagels and personality
- Gardening is wholesome
- Dogs are wholesome
- Watching fine cinema is weird but wholesome
- Italians tan!!

Like. All of it was just like, OK, this was what teenage-me thought, but I'm now a bit over it?? Why not challenge my preconceptions a bit! Why NOT, INSTEAD:
- Rich people are nice?!
- The blond mean rich girl has a rich, interior life full of her own suffering?
- NYC is provincial and, how about, PHILLY is the best city in the world?!
- NYC has bagels AND MAYBE BIRYANI? Shall we focus on the biryani!?! What about fufu?!
- Gardening = boring and you get toxoplasmosis from it!
- Fine cinema = boring AND snobby
- Some Italians don't tan! Many Sicilians are redheads! For example!

I'm not saying I even believe in all of the above counter-points, I just WANTED SOMETHING A BIT MORE REFRESHING. A bit more contrary! A bit less on-the-nose and basic! Can we expand our horizons JUST A TINY LITTLE BIT?

Adina is born in Philadelphia in 1977. At the age of four she is “activated” when her father leaves the family after pushing Adina into the concrete of their yard. Adina realizes that she is a citizen of planet Cricket Rice, sent to earth to report on its inhabitants via a fax machine her mother has rescued from the trash.

You could be forgiven for thinking this is merely a childhood coping mechanism to being raised without her father on the edge of poverty, mostly isolated and alone. But her transmissions continue into adulthood — eventually being collected into a novel that receives wide acclaim. Lovely, but the conceit could quickly devolve into twee musings of life on Earth but Bertino is also writing a story of loss and grief. The acknowledgements speak of an Adina Talve-Goodman, a writer integral to the New York literary scene who passed away just prior to the pandemic at the age of 32 from cancer. The story is at turns devastating and yet Bertino managed to marry these divergent tones. I think in large part it's because Adina and her friends are queer, in every beautiful iteration of the word.