Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino

A friend of mine said to me recently that she had just finished this book and was dying to talk to someone about it. Pretty irresistible, especially when she added that it is quite short. I bought it immediately.

It’s the story of an alien who, while passing as human, records her observations of life on Earth, transmitting them to her — er, not people, fellow life forms? — who respond with brief, acerbic comments. Meanwhile, to outward appearances, she’s a girl growing up in Philadelphia. And so the book is a kind of doubled Bildungsroman, an account of young women’s lives seen from both inside and out. It’s strange and funny and poignant and sometimes heartbreaking. I was blown away.