Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino: What Even Is a Human?
A few weeks ago, I got to hear Marie-Helene Bertino read from the short story that became the basis for her novel,Beautyland. The passages she read were quirky, silly, and really really funny**. I immediately picked up the novel, excited to read more and expecting something along the lines of (but much, much better than) the 1999 movieThe Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human(if you know this movie, we should be friends).
It is like that movie in a cursory sense -- the idea here is that Adina, who we follow through her whole life, is reporting back to her alien race on the foibles and factualities of humans. Adina makes friends, experiences loneliness, strives, struggles, and reports it all back to her own folks via an enchanted fax machine.
What I did not expect from this novel is how profound, insightful, often very sad, and skillfully rendered it is.*** As the story unfolds, there is a constant juxtaposition of the "oh, humans are so silly and absurd and funny" with "oh, humans are so cruel and awful and how do they even get through this life?"
The gimmick of Adina being non-human and observing human foibles begins as a way for her to report objectively -- though often very humorously (I was getting Nate Bargatze Washington's Dream sketch vibes for a while) -- about we silly humans. But of course, this can't last. Adina becomes more human than human (with apologies to Rob Zombie) and experiences heartbreak and loneliness and deep emotional pain so much so that, Adina begins to wonder not what makes humans human, but what allows humans to KEEP BEING human.
Whenever I'm faced with a book that affects me deeply, as this one did, my instinct is just to gush and gush and gush. And I'm exercising every ounce of self-control not to do that here. But I'll tell you this: I really did love this quite a bit and it left a massive mark on me. It's an example of a book that I read at exactly the right time and place -- a piece of reading serendipity you can't ever create on purpose or reproduce again once it's happened. This book is an example of why I love reading. It's like a runner's high -- it's rare, but when it hits, it's absolutely the best feeling in the world.
**Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their day off.
***Anyone questioning whether god exists need only consider the brevity of a dog's life span. If there was a god, let alone a benevolent one, dogs would have life spans similar to parrots. We'd have to provide arrangements for them in our wills. We wouldn't have to see their muzzles fill with gray at age four. We'd never have to find them in the morning turned to stone.
Hi Greg, I just finished reading Beautyland and I agree with you.
It’s funny, sharp, and quietly devastating, with observations that make everyday life look strange again. Loved the lines on language: “Congrats” as a word so brief “its brevity cancels its sentiment,” and the reminder that “Language is pitiable when weighed against experience.”
The ritual stuff is brutal and hilarious, like why we chose popcorn, “the loudest sound on Earth,” as the official movie snack, and the take on alcohol: “Because, like many things humans enjoy, it frees them from their bodies.” It also names structure clearly, especially misogyny as an institution “built on faith… with hierarchy, jokes, language,” and it’s piercing on time and grief, how the world keeps going, how the subway “has the gall to run.”
Adina moves to her own rhythm, unbothered by the rules the rest of us inherited without question. She is the version of ourselves we wish we had the courage to be.
I LOVE the comparison of a great read to a runner's high. Can be such a similar feeling and that observation had me nodding my head smiling. I really want to read this book!!