Beautyland by Marie-Helene BertinoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The title felt a bit gratuitous to me, but then I thought, what would I title this novel? I have no idea. There are moments that read like a charming coming-of-age tale, others that twist your heart as our human-ness is witnessed and performed by Adina, and still others that serve up whimsical nostalgia from the late 70s, spanning from a famous moment on The Price is Right to Voyager's gold-plated time capsule phonograph record. It turns out the whimsy is deeper, after all, especially as Adina struggles with homesickness and trying to belong, and then experiences the deep grief of loss. Similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, Bertino's novel made me care about Adina more than her origin story, and I often forgot that there was an element of fantasy/sci-fi here. Part of this is due to the dry, but not unfeeling, delivery of the protagonist. Adina has an element of an "Everyman" (and yes, I'll use the male dominant term to connect specifically to its 15th-century reference) to her--we are Adina, if we choose to step back and look. What a gift to be able to see ourselves through her eyes, to laugh at our silliness, to cry at our cruelty, to empathize with our pain.
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