Beautyland
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 alie
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What you might want to know about Beautyland
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Adina Giorno is born in Philadelphia in 1977 and convinced from childhood that she is an alien sent to study Earth. She spends her life faxing dry, funny reports back home about the strangeness of being human.
Beautyland was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2024 and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. It was widely featured on best-of-2024 lists.
Beautyland was written by Marie-Helene Bertino, published in 2024 by Penguin Random House.
Beautyland is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Beautyland takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Beautyland is a standalone novel by Marie-Helene Bertino, not part of a series.
Beautyland is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.