In Marie-Helene Bertino’s most recent novel, Beautyland, an extraterrestrial girl is born to a single mother in a working class neighborhood of Philadelphia with one mission—to report on human life to her superiors and save their planet. Adina grows up much like any other human girl: forming friendships, going to school, fighting with her mom—but all the while she’s sending faxes with her observations of human behavior back to her home planet. As Adina grows into a young woman and eventually leaves Philadelphia and her mother, her separation from humanity becomes exacerbated as she struggles with feelings of loneliness and lack of purpose.
Bertino maintains an offbeat sense of humor in Adina’s narration and her reportage on human life: “When it was time to decide the official food of movie-watching, human beings did not go for Fig Newtons or caramel, foods that are silent, but popcorn, the loudest sound on Earth.” Adina’s many observations on the quirks of human life combine the humor and pathos of a great coming-of-age story, and often had me chuckling out loud while reading. As Adina struggles with loss and grief, the novel manages to maintain a sense of wonder and curiosity that make it feel truly revelatory.
One doesn’t have to be an extraterrestrial to empathize with Adina’s perspective as an outsider trying to find her place in a world that she doesn’t quite understand—Bertino’s thoughtful narration about loneliness and the human condition is a transfixing re-imagination of the coming-of-age narrative. The novel is a unique commentary on the transformative power of storytelling and how one can build a life around the simple act of writing things down and sharing them with others.
Beautyland is an exploration of what it means to be human from an outsider’s perspective, that tackles complicated questions about family, belonging, identity and class. For me, the novel was a fascinating read in contrast to the new Yorgos Lanthimos film, Poor Things, in which a woman has the brain of an infant implanted into her adult body. The film is a comedy about self discovery and liberation, and feels very much in conversation with Bertino’s novel about a girl who’s dedicated herself to the pursuit of learning and understanding mankind. These pieces of sci-fi art that allow women to forge their identities themselves are an enthralling endeavor to reimagine the genre and who it can speak to.