Some Thoughts on Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

The book, something of a bildungsroman, is the story of Adina -- a woman raised by a single Italian American woman in Northeast Philadelphia. The thing that makes the book unique can be summed up in this line where Adina shares her big secret.

     "What would you say if I told you I was from another planet?" she says. "And that I was here to take notes on human beings that I fax back to my superiors. And that it's possible one day they'll signal to me that it's time to go?" (p. 233)

Despite this extraterrestrial communication, Bertino's book is, at least in my opinion, tender and bittersweet. At times I wondered if I was reading a fictionalized version of the author's own life. The book reminds me quite a bit, at least in tone, of the 2012 movie Safety Not Guaranteed. Roger Ebert described that movie as follows.

Few descriptions of "Safety Not Guaranteed" will do it justice. It's a more ambitious and touching movie than seems possible, given its starting point, which is this classified ad in an alternative newspaper:

WANTED: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.

Bertino's book, in addition to being a gentle description of a woman who never quite feels like she fits in, is filled with a dry sense of humor. For example, at one point the space aliens ask Adina

IS EARTH SUITABLE FOR US TO LIVE?

She responds: "The parking is awful. You'd have to move your spaceship twice a week." Bertino is not the first person to admit to be mystified by New York City's alternate side parking rules.

I enjoyed Beautyland quite a bit,