Beautyland review: what it means to be from another planet (or maybe just human)

There are books you read, and there are books that read you. Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland falls firmly in the latter category—a shimmering, genre-bending novel that manages to feel both comfortingly familiar and utterly alien in the best sense of the word.

On the surface, Beautyland is a portrait of Adina Giorno, born in 1977 Philadelphia at the moment Voyager 1 launches into space, carrying the famous Golden Record—a time capsule intended to tell extraterrestrial life about Earth. Adina, it turns out, might be an alien herself, sent to observe Earthlings and report back via fax machine to her faraway planet. This premise alone is delightfully surreal, but Bertino isn’t writing science fiction as escape. She’s using it as a lens to magnify something deeper and more tender: what it means to live life feeling not entirely of this world.

For readers born in the late ’70s or early ’80s, there’s an unmistakable wave of nostalgia here. From a 1970s tube top mishap on The Price is Right to the music of the 1980s, the book is rich with cultural references that instantly transport. Having been born just a year before Adina, I felt a quiet thrill in recognizing the contours of a shared timeline. And yet, there were moments—due to my own rural upbringing—where the references flew over my head. But that, too, felt fitting. Beautyland is, in part, a novel about being slightly out of sync, about looking in from the margins and trying to make sense of a culture that doesn’t quite seem built for you.

But don’t be misled by the fax machines and mixtapes—this isn’t a nostalgia piece dressed up in sci-fi clothes. At its core, Beautyland is a deeply emotional meditation on loneliness, identity, and what it means to be different. Adina’s “alien” status, while possibly literal, reads even more powerfully as metaphor. Her hyperawareness, her precise attention to sensory detail, and her sometimes disorienting distance from others brought to mind neurodivergent perspectives, especially those of individuals with autism. Whether or not that was Bertino’s intention is beside the point—the resonance is there, and it’s profound.

The novel speaks to anyone who has ever looked around and thought, “Is it just me?” Readers who’ve felt like outliers—whether due to their neurotype, sexuality, race, class, or simply an unshakable sense of being on the outside—will see something familiar in Adina’s journey. And yet, this is not a book of despair. It’s funny, warm, and often filled with awe. Adina’s transmissions back to her planet are curious, hopeful, and painfully precise. She finds beauty in Earth’s oddities—its rituals, heartbreaks, absurdities, and small redemptions.

Bertino’s prose is deceptively simple but often quietly stunning. Sentences shimmer. Chapters end with the kind of sentence that makes you stop, breathe, and maybe reread it three times. There’s humor here, too—often wry, sometimes absurd, but always deeply human.

What elevates Beautyland beyond being simply “a book about being different” is that it doesn’t just observe difference; it celebrates it. It acknowledges the pain of not fitting in, but never asks the protagonist to change who she is to belong. Instead, it insists that maybe it’s the world that’s strange—and that there’s strength, even grace, in holding on to your otherness.

In the end, Beautyland is about trying to understand a planet where cruelty and kindness coexist, where faxes carry love across the void, and where being human often means feeling alien. It’s a book for misfits, for old souls, and for anyone who has ever longed for connection—earthly or otherwise.

If you’re someone who’s ever stood at the edge of a crowded room and felt like you were beaming in from another galaxy, Beautyland is for you. And if you’ve never felt that way, well—this book might help you understand what it means to live life as if every step is a transmission home. Beautyland is a quietly revolutionary novel—heartbreaking and hilarious, weird and wonderful. Read it for the nostalgia, stay for the empathy, and leave with a renewed sense of wonder.

Recommended for:

• Fans of The Little Prince, E.T., or Parakeet
• Readers who feel like aliens in their own hometowns
• Anyone born around 1977 who remembers the hum of a dial-up modem
• Lovers of lyrical prose and stories that straddle reality and metaphor

Have you read Beautyland? I’d love to hear what transmissions it sent to your corner of the universe. Drop a comment below or beam me a message. 🌍📡👽

Want to know where Voyager I and the Golden Record are right now? Check out NASA’s website to learn more!

Related Content

• An interview with Marie-Helene Bertino, author of 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas (Dead Darlings)
• Parakeet brings out the delightfully weird, unexpectedly wise side of Marie-Helene Bertino (World Literature Today)
• Interview: Marie-Helene Bertino by Charles Yu (BOMB)
• In “Beautyland,” an Italian American extraterrestrial in Philly is humanity’s sharpest scribe (Electric Lit)
• Here’s the cover for Marie-Helene Bertino’s new novel, Beautyland. (Literary Hub)

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