Chapter 1
A Cosmic Visitor Observes Humanity
What if the person next to you on the bus was secretly an extraterrestrial? Marie-Helene Bertino's mesmerizing novel "Beautyland" explores this tantalizing possibility through Adina Giorno, born in Philadelphia in 1977-the same year NASA launched Voyager 1 into the cosmos carrying humanity's golden record. The book has garnered cult status among readers fascinated by its blend of cosmic wonder and earthly struggles, with celebrities like Phoebe Bridgers citing it as a favorite exploration of alienation and belonging. Bertino's work stands alongside contemporaries like Karen Russell and Kelly Link in blending the fantastical with the mundane, creating a narrative that feels both otherworldly and intimately human. The novel's examination of what it means to observe humanity while living among us resonates particularly in our increasingly disconnected digital age, offering a mirror to our own alienation through the eyes of someone truly alien.
Chapter 2
Cosmic Birth: When Stars and Humans Align
In September 1977, two momentous journeys begin simultaneously: Voyager 1 launches into the cosmos carrying Earth's story to the stars, while baby Adina arrives on Earth-perhaps bringing something extraterrestrial back. Born prematurely to Terese, whose vital signs plummet during labor, Adina emerges "yellowed like old newspaper" with a full head of black hair, instinctively drawn to the heat lamp in her incubator. As Carl Sagan's team sends Chuck Berry and whale songs into space, Adina begins her life as an otherworldly observer in Northeast Philadelphia.
During the difficult birth, something "lighter and more conscious detaches" from Terese's body, slipping into a corridor with darkness behind and cherishing light ahead. Meanwhile, Adina enters the world "early and yellowed," placed under a phototherapy lamp where she appears "other than human"-plant-like or marine, "an orchid or otter." Her name means "noble" while Giorno means "day." Exhausted and alone, Terese watches her tiny daughter through the nursery window, realizing her wild days are over, unaware that this baby might be more than just human.
The cosmic and the ordinary intertwine in Adina's earliest moments. While the Voyager spacecraft carries humanity's greatest achievements into the void, Adina begins her mission of observation on Earth. What does it mean to be simultaneously of a place and apart from it? How might someone not fully human experience our world? These questions form the foundation of Adina's journey-a being caught between worlds, belonging fully to neither, yet intimately connected to both.
As she grows, Adina develops an extraordinary sensitivity to heat and light, constantly seeking warmth like a plant bending toward the sun. This seemingly small detail becomes a profound metaphor for her existence-an alien consciousness drawn to the energy that sustains life, forever reaching toward illumination both literal and figurative.
Chapter 3
Adolescence: The Ultimate Alien Experience
What could be more alien than being a teenager? For Adina, adolescence becomes a double estrangement-both the typical teenage alienation and her actual extraterrestrial nature creating layers of isolation. After a humiliating encounter with the popular "J girls," Adina longs for her cosmic superiors to rescue her, but no celestial ships appear. Three hundred miles above, the Hubble telescope orbits at five miles per minute, observing stars' births and deaths while Voyager 1 continues its lonely journey billions of miles away. The Golden Record contains no images of teenage social disasters or mundane human moments-the messy reality of existence on Earth.
Adina resolves to abandon dancing and popularity for homework, imagining her superiors will praise her with faxes declaring her "THE BEST HUMAN" and superior to "THOSE J GIRL SLUT-BAGS." She communicates with her "superiors" via fax machine, sending reports on human behavior and receiving cryptic responses that shape her understanding of her mission. These communications-whether real or imagined-become her lifeline to an identity beyond the confusing social landscape of adolescence.
Her friendship with Toni provides temporary grounding, but even this connection has its limits. They spend summer days watching television at Toni's house with Dominic, where Adina develops strong opinions about narrative consistency and theme songs. When they watch "My Left Foot," Dominic declares Daniel Day-Lewis the finest actor ever through tears. These ordinary teenage moments are transformed by Adina's perspective-she's not just experiencing them but studying them, filing them away as observations about human behavior.
From movies, Adina compiles notes about how aliens are portrayed: small, separate, found by troubled suburbanites, initially welcomed but ultimately rejected and forced to return home. These fictional representations become a painful mirror, reflecting society's tendency to eventually reject the truly different. At night, she lies awake longing for her people, wondering how to know everyone on Earth, contemplating Carl Sagan's writings about advanced extraterrestrials who might experience time non-linearly. Her sadness finds no purchase in the cosmic expanse as she listens to Philip Glass tapes, having "become an American teenager."
Isn't this the universal adolescent experience-feeling fundamentally different, misunderstood, and alone? Adina's literal alienness serves as the perfect metaphor for teenage isolation. We all remember moments of standing outside the circle, observing others' seemingly effortless social connections while feeling like visitors from another planet.
Chapter 4
Working Life: Serving Humanity, One Scrod at a Time
In the 1990s, Adina works the Early Bird shift at the Red Lion Diner, a neon-lit establishment along Roosevelt Boulevard. She serves elderly customers their carefully specified meals, particularly scrod with various preparations. The veteran waitresses-Heather, Phyllis, and Melissa-eventually accept her, giving her the nickname "Little One" and protecting her when male customers make vulgar comments. This workplace becomes an unexpected community for Adina, a place where her differences matter less than her ability to remember which customers want their toast buttered on only one side.
Adina attends community college classes twice weekly, learning about early humans but finding the education lacking in the details that interest her most. She continues sending reports via fax to her superiors, who rebuke her curiosity about "others" like herself, telling her to "STICK TO YOUR OWN LIFE" and that there's "NO NEED TO COMBINE" with them. These cryptic messages reinforce her isolation while paradoxically connecting her to something beyond Earth.
At nineteen, Adina lives like "a middle-aged divorcee"-counting tips, doing sit-ups, showering, tracking the night sky, and filing notes in her childhood bedroom. She grieves deeply when Carl Sagan dies, feeling as though "one of her fathers is gone." Sagan's death represents the loss of someone who looked at the stars with wonder rather than fear, who imagined cosmic connection rather than alien invasion.
Her writing talent emerges when she covers a lacrosse match for the student newspaper, but editor Keith Nguyen is bewildered by her impressionistic style that omits scores and team names. Her perspective-seeing patterns and energy rather than conventional details-makes her a terrible sports reporter but a remarkable observer of humanity. Later, she reconnects with Mrs. Goldman, who once sold books from a van and now owns a bookstore. Mrs. Goldman remembers Adina's intensity and love of Nancy Drew, expressing disappointment when Adina dismisses herself as "just a waitress."
Haven't we all felt this tension between our inner complexity and the simplicity of how others perceive us? Adina's struggle to reconcile her cosmic consciousness with her mundane job mirrors our own compartmentalized identities-the gap between who we are inside and how we appear to the world.
Chapter 5
Finding Connection: The Singular Plural
Adina's mother tends a garden that provides vegetables for neighbors, including Mrs. Leafhalter, who dies of heart problems and leaves Adina her moss-green television. Watching a nature documentary on this inherited TV, Adina becomes fascinated with Pando, a genetically identical aspen grove that is technically one organism-"the singular plural"-which reminds her of her own alien nature. This discovery becomes a metaphor for connection that will shape her understanding of humanity-the possibility that separation is an illusion, that we might all be parts of a greater whole despite our apparent individuality.
At the diner, Adina encounters Janae, who orchestrated her "greatest humiliation" in school but claims not to remember it. The incident that defined years of Adina's life is merely a forgotten moment for her tormentor-a painful reminder of how differently we experience shared events. That same day, she learns that Lottie, an elderly waitress she was close to, has died. These twin encounters with past and present loss push Adina toward change.
At twenty-two, Adina prepares for her first flight to Utah to visit the Pando grove, feeling certain she will die on the plane but boarding anyway, counting to one hundred as they take off "until they breach the clouds where it is always a sunny day." During the flight, she panics during turbulence, locking herself in the bathroom and counting to five hundred. She asks a flight attendant if they're going to crash, and he reassures her nothing can force a plane from cruising altitude. When asked what she fears, she answers: "Staying the same forever. And wind."
Instead of visiting the aspen grove in Utah, Adina impulsively buys a train ticket to New York City. As the California Zephyr carries her through spectacular western landscapes, she realizes her fear has enabled a broader adventure. She calls her mother from Omaha, playfully making her guess where she is. This spontaneous deviation from her plan marks a turning point-Adina beginning to trust her instincts rather than following predetermined paths.
Upon returning home, Adina excitedly faxes her superiors that she's dropping out and moving to New York City. She buys a Toyota Tercel, declines Keith Nguyen's offer to keep writing for the student paper, and celebrates her last day at the diner with the veteran waitresses who sing "New York, New York" over rice pudding. Before leaving, Adina attempts to tell her mother the truth about her alien origins. Her mother misunderstands, thinking Adina is expressing alienation rather than literal extraterrestrial identity, and suggests she keep such thoughts to herself.
Isn't this misunderstanding painfully familiar? How often do we try to reveal our true selves only to have others interpret our truth through their own limited framework? Adina's mother hears metaphor where her daughter means literal truth-a communication gap that mirrors the wider challenge of true connection between any two beings.
Chapter 6
New York City: Finding Her Orbit
Adina moves to New York City the same month astronomers discover a red dwarf star in Aquarius orbited by seven Earth-sized planets. She settles into a junior one-bedroom apartment beneath flight paths of JFK and LaGuardia airports, in a neighborhood defined by constant sound-planes overhead, the elevated 7 train, and halal meat-cart vendors dragging their carts down the alley past her window every morning and evening. These sounds don't bother her; they signal movement and make her feel like "a sort of hub." She befriends Lionel, a vendor who advises her to "trust the group" in the city.
In New York, Adina finds work at a literary magazine called The Lunar Surface, where her unusual perspective becomes an asset rather than a liability. Her colleagues-eccentric, ambitious, and creative-provide a community where difference is celebrated rather than suppressed. For perhaps the first time, Adina's alien perspective becomes valuable rather than isolating.
She adopts a dog named Butternut, a companion who loves her unconditionally without questioning her origins. This relationship becomes one of the purest connections in Adina's life-a being who accepts her completely without requiring explanation. When Butternut dies suddenly, Adina finds herself devastated by the loss, wrapping him in a crocheted sweater her mother made and placing him in her freezer, unable to part with him completely.
Meanwhile, Adina's childhood friend Toni has become a successful writer but is battling terminal cancer. Their reconnection brings Adina's past and present into conversation, forcing her to reckon with her identity in new ways. When doctors tell Toni "You don't have to fight anymore," she responds defiantly: "What's that supposed to mean? Try something else. Another set of chemo. Needles. Whatever." As Toni's care changes from curative to comfort, Adina witnesses a profound moment during her final breaths-a light emanating from Toni's chest that spreads outward, filling the room, the hospital, the city, and beyond, continuing even as Toni's heart stops beating.
This moment of transcendence-watching consciousness expand beyond the confines of the body-resonates deeply with Adina's understanding of existence. Perhaps death isn't an ending but a transformation, a return to a greater whole like the aspen grove she once sought to visit. Through Toni's death, Adina glimpses a connection between her alien understanding and human experience-the possibility that consciousness transcends individual form.
Chapter 7
Revelation: The Alien Among Us
At Toni's funeral reception, Adina discovers that her friend has published a memoir revealing Adina's extraterrestrial nature to the world. Toni's publishing friends surround Adina, explaining that the memoir has generated intense online interest with "Believers and Nonbelievers" analyzing it for clues. Dominic gives Adina a box from Toni, suggesting she open it later.
Suddenly, Adina's private identity becomes public speculation. The secret she's carried throughout her life-communicated only through faxes to unseen superiors-becomes fodder for internet debates and public fascination. This exposure forces a reckoning: Will Adina deny her true nature to maintain safety, or embrace her identity despite the risks?
After the funeral, Adina visits Beautyland, the department store where she spent time as a child. Now renovated, only the perfumery section remains untouched. She realizes the perfumes that once seemed luxurious were actually budget brands marketed to working mothers. A clerk explains many people visit to see the renovation, and they share a moment discussing the oddly named businesses in the neighborhood-"named after places to sound like places... so you think you're home."
This observation captures Adina's experience perfectly-things designed to create familiarity often highlighting one's fundamental displacement. The perfume counter that once seemed magical now reveals itself as ordinary, yet still holds emotional significance. Isn't this the essence of growing up-seeing through illusions while still honoring their importance in our development?
Back in New York, Adina discovers Toni's gift is a phone with only the Twitter app installed. Initially resistant, she eventually embraces social media, finding her account has 650,000 followers. She posts a simple "HELLO" and receives an overwhelming flood of supportive messages through the night, ending with a final "THANK YOU" before turning off her phone and sending her "final, one-word transmission" by fax.
Chapter 8
Transcendence: Finding Home Among the Stars
Adina completes a pivotal reading at a Brooklyn synagogue, confronting an audience starkly divided between ardent supporters and hostile detractors. Some hold handmade signs declaring "LIAR" and "ALIEN GO HOME," while others clutch copies of her book with reverence. This public moment - standing before those who either celebrate or reject her otherworldly nature - becomes a defining crucible for Adina's self-acceptance. After decades of careful observation, she finds herself under the microscope, her very identity the subject of intense scrutiny and passionate judgment from both sides of the human experience.
The charged atmosphere of the synagogue, with its ancient traditions and modern conflicts, provides a fitting backdrop for this moment of reckoning. Here, in a space dedicated to questioning existence and celebrating mystery, Adina faces the full weight of her dual nature. The wooden pews, stained glass windows, and sacred texts surround her as she navigates this final public performance of her humanity.
In her culminating reflections, Adina discovers unexpected peace in the texture of everyday memories - her mother's distinctive eggplant-colored coat that "kept her warm" through Brooklyn winters, the peculiar human paradox that a lifespan can be "brief but at times feels endless." Though she never experienced the kind of romantic love portrayed in Hollywood films, she recognizes the profound depth of other loves: her fierce devotion to her mother, the steady companionship of friends, the unconditional affection of her dog, her passionate dedication to her academic vocation, and her encompassing love for humanity itself. These loves, she realizes, "were transcendent" - crossing the boundaries between terrestrial and cosmic existence.
The novel's denouement follows Adina to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, rich with symbolism suggesting her imminent departure from Earth. The ferry - that everyday vessel of transition - becomes her final passage. As she prepares to leave, "she'll discover the last human sense to depart is hearing" - the foghorns, lapping waves, and seabird cries of the harbor becoming her final tethers to the earthly realm. Like Saint-Exupery's Little Prince returning to his solitary asteroid, she enters "the absolute corridor where death is merely a diminishment of a solo perspective," joining a "glittering, infinite expanse" where distant voices welcome her home.
This ambiguous ending invites multiple interpretations: Is Adina experiencing a physical death, or returning to her cosmic origins? Is she transcending her earthly form, or simply completing a cycle of existence? Perhaps these distinctions ultimately matter less than the transformation itself - the profound movement from isolation to connection, from careful observation to full participation, from perpetual alienation to ultimate belonging. After a lifetime of studying humanity from the outside, Adina's final act becomes one of integration - finding her rightful place in the universal consciousness that transcends individual existence, where the boundaries between observer and observed, alien and human, finally dissolve into stardust.
Chapter 9
The Observer Effect: How Watching Changes Us
Throughout her life on Earth, Adina serves as both observer and participant in human experience. Her dual perspective allows her to see patterns and connections that others miss, yet also prevents her from fully inhabiting moments without analyzing them. Isn't this the fundamental human condition in our self-conscious age? We simultaneously live our lives and document them, experience emotions and analyze them, belong to communities while feeling separate from them.
Adina's communications with her "superiors"-whether real or imagined-represent her ongoing dialogue between experiencing life and reporting on it. Her faxed observations become increasingly nuanced as she moves from childhood to adulthood, evolving from simple descriptions to complex reflections on consciousness and connection. When her superiors tell her thoughts are "UNSURPRISING AND MEDIOCRE," we feel her disappointment-the universal fear that our deepest insights might be obvious to others, that our unique perspective might not be special after all.
Yet Adina's greatest strength lies precisely in her ability to find wonder in the ordinary. Her fascination with everyday human rituals-from the specific way elderly diner patrons order their meals to the communal experience of watching television-reveals the strangeness and beauty of habits we take for granted. Through her eyes, we see our own behaviors anew, recognizing both their absurdity and their importance in creating meaning and connection.
By the novel's end, Adina has completed her mission not by reporting on humanity but by becoming fully part of it-loving, losing, grieving, and ultimately transcending individual existence to join something greater. Her journey suggests that true understanding comes not from detached observation but from full participation, with all its attendant joy and pain. Perhaps the most alien act of all is to fully embrace being human-to accept our brief, beautiful existence as part of the "singular plural" that connects all consciousness across the cosmos.
Chapter 10
Cosmic Perspective: Finding Meaning in the Vastness
"Beautyland" ultimately offers a profound meditation on perspective - how our understanding of life changes depending on the distance from which we view it. From the cosmic scale, individual human concerns seem insignificant; from the intimate scale of daily life, the universe seems remote and abstract. Adina exists at the intersection of these perspectives, constantly translating between the cosmic and the mundane. Her unique position as both observer and participant allows her to illuminate the delicate balance between personal significance and cosmic insignificance that all humans must navigate.
When she watches a documentary about Pando - the aspen grove that appears to be separate trees but is actually one interconnected organism spanning 106 acres and weighing 6,600 tons - Adina recognizes a metaphor for her own experience. The discovery resonates deeply with her understanding of consciousness and connection. Perhaps separation is an illusion; perhaps we are all connected in ways we cannot fully comprehend from our limited individual perspectives. This realization doesn't erase the pain of isolation but offers the possibility of a greater belonging beyond immediate human connection. Like Pando's vast root system, invisible connections may unite us beneath the surface of our apparent individuality.
The novel explores multiple scales of existence simultaneously. At the microscopic level, we see Adina's daily struggles with human customs and social cues. At the macroscopic level, we witness her awareness of stellar phenomena and cosmic cycles. Between these extremes lies the messy, beautiful reality of human existence - birthday parties and grocery shopping existing alongside contemplation of quantum mechanics and galactic evolution. This multilayered perspective challenges readers to consider their own place in the cosmic hierarchy.
As readers, we're left with questions that transcend the novel's specific narrative: What does it mean to be truly alien? Is anyone ever fully at home in the world? How might we bridge the gaps between our inner experience and our outward expression? These questions have no simple answers, but in exploring them through Adina's journey, we gain insight into our own search for connection and meaning. The novel suggests that perhaps alienation itself is a universal experience - that feeling foreign or disconnected might actually be what unites us all.
The novel's final image - Adina joining a "glittering, infinite expanse" where voices welcome her home - offers a vision of transcendence that feels both alien and deeply familiar. Haven't we all longed for such recognition and belonging? Whether we interpret this moment as death, return to cosmic origins, or metaphorical transcendence, it speaks to the universal desire to find our place in the vastness - to know that our brief, beautiful lives matter in the infinite expanse of space and time. This conclusion suggests that true belonging might require embracing both our cosmic insignificance and our profound connection to everything that exists.
