Beautyland

One of the best books I have read this year KALIANE BRADLEY, Guardian A perfect little polished garnet of a novel New York Times Beautyland is a miracle. Ill be rereading it forever KAVEH AKBAR Meet Adina: a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times, a companion to anyone who has ever felt homesick at home Born at the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space, Adina is a baby of unusual perception. Tiny and jaundiced, she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognises she is different, not least because of her strange knowledge of a faraway planet. When a fax machine arrives at home, her suspicions are confirmed: it allows her to communicate with her extraterrestrial relatives, who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings. As Adina makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and delights of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges her to share her observations with the world. Is there a chance there are others like her out there? Beautyland is a shyly joyful novel about real life on our planet, the challenge of knowing ourselves and the miracle of finding our people in this vast universe. Beautiful and hilarious and transcendent . . . Bertino is an other-worldly talent TOMMY ORANGE A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life DAKOTA JOHNSON