Beautyland

Beautyland is a novel by Marie-Helene Bertino. It was published on January 16, 2024, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book follows Adina, who is sent by aliens before birth to find out if they could live on earth and reports to them via a fax machine. The book starts with Adina's birth, which takes place in 1977 when Voyager 1 was launched.

Reception
According to the online book review aggregator, Book Marks, the novel received rave reviews from critics. Alexandra Jacobs of The New York Times called the novel "astonishing" and says that the novel "refuses to give in to sentimentality or serendipity or the idea of everything working out for a reason". Michael Schaub writing for The Boston Globe called the piece a "shimmering masterpiece from an author with talent to spare". In Bomb, author Hilary Leichter said "Bertino taps into a particular nostalgic awe familiar to a generation of kids raised on Carl Sagan and inflatable lunchroom planetariums" and called the protagonist's observations "breathtaking, mundane, and sometimes both."