I Can’t Wait For…Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino!
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino Genres: Sci Fi
Published on: 16th January 2024
Goodreads
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At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different; she also possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.
For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. But at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?
A blazing novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life in our universe, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a remarkable evocation of feeling in exile at home and introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.
The moment I read the blurb for this one, I knew it was going to rip my heart out. But (probably) in a good a way!
I know I’m far from the only one who grew up feeling Different, but as a kid I actually spent years constructing an elaborate explanation for how I was secretly Not Human. So…this kind of caught me in the gut. Even if my fantasies went in a, well, more fantasy direction, this is very nearly the same thing, so Beautyland kind of immediately feels intensely personal.
Taking a step back from All The Feels – how whimsically delightful is the idea of communicating with aliens via FAX MACHINE??? That just makes me grin uncontrollably. I love it!
It’s being marketed as more literary than sci fi, so I don’t know how much we’ll get to see of the alien side of things. But I DO know I’ll be reading it either way.
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