Beautyland

Beautyland (2024) is a work of literary fiction written by American author Marie-Helene Bertino, whose novels and short stories have received a number of awards and accolades. Beautyland was named a best book of 2024 by several outlets, including The New York Times, the Guardian, TIME, and Esquire magazine, along with the website Goodreads.

The novel describes the life of Adina Giorno, an Italian American girl born in 1977, who believes that she has been sent by inhabitants of a far distant planet to report on life on Earth. As Adina grows up in Philadelphia, and then moves to New York City, she faxes her superiors her observations on human culture, habits, and eccentricities while struggling to form lasting relationships and find a sense of belonging. The novel weaves cosmic metaphors and astronomical discoveries into a metaphor for Adina’s loneliness and sense of distance from her human peers.

This guide refers to the hardcover edition published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Content Warning: The novel and this guide discuss death by suicide and anti-gay and anti-asexual bias.

Plot Summary

Adina Giorno is born in Northeast Philadelphia in 1977, coinciding with the launch of the space probe Voyager. Adina doesn’t know it yet, but she is a probe sent by a distant civilization to observe and report on life on Earth. When she is four, after an accident in which her father pushes her down concrete stairs, Adina is activated. That night she is introduced to a sort of classroom where her superiors, who appear to her as a shimmering, multi-souled entity, instruct her to communicate with them via the fax machine that her mother rescued from the trash.

Adina’s father leaves the family, and Adina’s mother supports them on her salary from working for a care facility for those with intellectual disabilities. In fourth grade, Adina meets Toni, another Italian American girl. Some things that enchant and soothe Adina are shopping at Beautyland, her mother’s favorite supply store; watching and listening to the fish in the aquarium store; and visiting the planetarium on a class trip. Adina is put in an accelerated learners’ program and is prescribed glasses and a speech therapist. Her mother dates Mark, a colleague from work who turns out to be married. After this disappointment, her mother starts a garden at their apartment complex. Adina is fascinated by her role as an alien and continues to attend the night classroom, send faxes to her superiors, and receive occasional instructions or replies. She is obsessed with the astronomer Carl Sagan and his theories about intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

The summer before high school, Adina spends a month on the beachfront with a neighbor, Mrs. Leafhalter, and hangs out with Dominic, Toni’s older brother. Adina is thrilled when she is briefly invited to join the group of popular girls, who all have names beginning with J. However, when Adina refuses to make out with a classmate, Amadeo, she is kicked out of the group.

Adina worries about fitting in in high school because she and Toni, there on scholarship, don’t have the same lifestyle as other girls. Adina worries particularly that she won’t get any balloons for her birthday, which is a school ritual; however, she ends up receiving several balloons. Adina has the largest speaking part in the school play, but when she is passed over for a scholarship to an acting program, she decides to live at home, take college classes, and work at a diner. Toni and Dominic move to New York City.

Adina feels that loneliness defines her life, even though the other servers at the diner look out for her. She continues to report to her superiors on human culture and relationships. She writes articles for the college newspaper that are well-received. When Mrs. Leafhalter dies, she leaves Adina her television, and Adina learns about Pando, the colony of aspen trees in Utah that are all one single organism, clones of one another. Pando reminds Adina of her alien people, who are a collective being, having evolved past the individual body, and who seek to learn if they can inhabit Earth. After attempting to travel west to visit Pando, Adina decides to move to New York City. She gets a job as a receptionist for a business consulting company, rents a noisy apartment next to a train and two airports, and joins a gym. She learns from other New Yorkers how to adapt to the city.

Over time, Adina settles into her new life. She reconnects with Toni, who has learned about Adina’s faxes and wants to publish them as a book. Adina adopts a dog and begins dating a musician named Miguel who tells her, when they meet, that he, too, is an alien. Adina eventually realizes that he means this as a metaphor for feeling as though he’s unlike other people. In the meantime, Adina learns from her superiors that they are dying on their home planet and need to know if Earth is inhabitable for them. Adina’s questions go unanswered, and eventually, she stops receiving replies to her faxes. Her book is published and becomes popular, and Adina is asked to give readings, but it doesn’t help her feel more connected to other people. Instead, she experiences a series of losses: Miguel breaks up with her, her dog dies, and Toni is diagnosed with breast cancer. Toni’s treatments are unsuccessful, and Adina is with Toni when she dies at age 40.

Grief devastates Adina. She feels like a stranger in her home neighborhood in Philadelphia and feels that she can no longer live in New York. When the space object Oumuamua is identified outside the solar system, Adina is convinced that her people have sent a ship for her. A final visit from her former teacher, an entity she named Solomon, confirms that her people have left their planet. They ask Adina to summarize Earth in one word, then deactivate. Adina reflects on the things that she has loved in her life—her mother, her dog, her friends—and thinks that she didn’t do enough with the time she was given. She buys a ticket for the Staten Island ferry, planning to ride it to the middle of the harbor. She imagines rejoining her people and being welcomed home.