I don’t know what to think of this novel by Marie-Helene Bertino.
I listened to the audiobook because it was selected for one of my book clubs. If it hadn’t been for the book club, I might not have finished it. Honestly, even with the book club, I was tempted to ditch this one. The deciding factor lay in the fact that it’s a pretty short book, so it didn’t take me long to finish.
When I was looking through reviews of this book to see what other people saw in it that I didn’t, I found a review on Goodreads from a friend of mine who refused to give it a star rating because the book just was not for her, and she didn’t think it would be fair to give it a star rating.
I did give it a star rating (I can’t remember what I gave it,) but I thought that was an interesting way to go about it. I certainly agree with her that this book was not for me, but that doesn’t make it a bad book. It is well written, and I know a lot of people enjoyed it. It just so happens that I was not one of those people.
I listened to a podcast in which the host talked about the fact that she doesn’t normally like a book that’s just a person walking through the woods thinking about things. She prefers the more plot-heavy books, and I am very much on that wavelength.
She loved Beautyland, and when her mom read it, she said she was surprised she liked it because it was more of a person-walking-through-the-woods-thinking-about-things-type book rather than a plot-heavy book. She like it anyway, but I think the lack of plot is a big reason this book did not resonate with me.
Yes, it’s well written, but I still found myself going, “OK, is there going to be a point to any of this?”
The answer is, no. No, there is not. It’s just a woman wandering through life thinking about things.
What makes this book interesting is the fact that the main character, Adina, is not human. She looks, acts, and behaves very much like a human. But, in fact, she was sent to Earth by aliens to study human life and report back to her “superiors” via fax machine.
She does so regularly, starting from a fairly young age.
She’s the only child of a single mother, and nothing is ever mentioned about her father, except for the fact that he looked like Gabriel García Márquez.
Her mother appears to be adequate as a mother. She’s not wonderful, but nor is she terrible. She’s doing her best as a single mother who is also struggling financially. At one point, Adina tells her mom, “You were always doing taxes,” and her mom tells her she had a job doing other people’s taxes for them.
Adina’s mom dates a few men, some of whom become serious enough to get introduced to Adina, but none of them ever stick around for the long haul.
Adina herself only dates one or two men, and appears to be asexual because she never exhibits much interest in sex. Her only long-term romantic relationship breaks down because she loses interest in having sex with him. She’s not having sex with anyone else, she’s just not particularly interested in the act altogether.
She might also have Autism because she doesn’t seem to be able to relate to people in general the way they expect her to relate to them. Towards the end of the book, there’s a section in which she publishes a collection of her writing about her experiences as an alien disguised as a human. Some of her critics posit the theory that she might have Autism, but of course you can’t reliably diagnose anyone without having met them, even if you have the qualifications to diagnose people with mental disorders.
It’s also tempting to question whether Adina really is an alien, or whether it’s some delusion she’s come up with to deal with the fact that she doesn’t feel human. The only thing that puts a pin in that theory is the fact that, at one point, her best friend happens upon her collection of faxes, and she doesn’t just find what Adina has been putting out into the universe. She finds responses.
After listening to people who enjoyed this book, I can tell you what they enjoyed about it was the way in which it got so specific that it was able to speak generally to the human experience. Particularly the female human experience.
I can corroborate the fact that there were certain lines in this book that hit home particularly hard, but it wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.
Like I said, this book was not for me, but if you like books that are more thoughtful and less plotty, then it just might be for you.