Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

 

Review

While I do a fair bit of reading I think there are writing styles I wouldn’t gravitate toward. While not totally stream of consciousness it’s closer to that end of the spectrum than a more common 3rd person limited point of view. (It reminded me of some of Carmen Machado’s short stories.) Being in book club makes me glad to have extrinsic motivation to continue reading. I went from considering stopping on page 1 to appreciating the writing on page 20. In fact, Bertino has a skill for using conversations and situations as a way to display the relationships between characters.

Beautyland is ultimately a very well written book that just isn’t my taste. The last forty percent of the novel focuses on caretaking and grief which aren't themes  that really resonate or interest me; though I can see *why* this is a well loved book for many. My main opinion is that the book is literary fiction that didn’t have a strong enough point of view so was re-worked to be speculative fiction. 

TL;DR Beautyland is a story that tells us the glimpses of humanity as told as a child grows up via fax machine. 

Quotes
“Today, he will use metal to add wood to wood and produce a swing, the way a man plus a woman and baby makes a family.” (7)

“Every object in the apartment must also function in two or three other ways. Everything repurposed, everything salvaged. Even she, the child, was meant to fulfill several things at once: to be silent, useful, hardworking, a credit to her father.” (8 - 9) 

“Her mother looks confused. She thinks she’s kept their lack of money hidden. She doesn’t realize how anxiety influences her posture, voice, the heaviness of her footsteps, the length of time it takes her to leave the car in the driveway at the end of the workday, so that even before she enters the apartment Adina knows her mother’s mood.” (34)

“Adina asks her mother if she is beautiful and she says she is unique. She does not say Adina is not beautiful. She does not say the word beautiful at all. Adine is adept at drawing lines from her mother’s language to hidden meaning. She knows what she is: ugly as sin.” (51)

“What is this heat in her throat, this urge to cry? It must be the opposite of homesickness, to return home to find it more beautiful, to return and still feel distance.” (83)

“ENDINGS ARE HARD.” (113)

“It must be human empathy that compels her to cheer her friend who received the scholarship she wanted, though she didn’t learn that on Earth.” (137)

“Fulfilling the promise to bear witness to every departure so the person leaving doesn’t feel their time has been wasted.” (138)

“Adina realizes her naivete. Coming from a background where everything is work, of course her mother categorizes her news as within the realm of her own mental failing.” (170)

“Adina supposes that humanizing an animal risks making one feel obligated to try to save it, or at least examine one’s own participation in making it extinct.” (250)

“In the end, they break up for a common human reason: They don’t believe in each other.” (261)