Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino

 

I really enjoyed this novel about a young woman, Adina, who believes that she is an alien sent to earth to gather information about humans and share it with her superiors whose own planet is becoming unlivable and who have to relocate. She uses a fax machine to communicate with them, and they also appear in her dreams at night. She comes out as an alien to friends and family, then the world when her closest friend convinces her to publish her observations as a book which becomes very popular and makes her a literary sensation. When Adina's dog dies unexpectedly and she loses her best friend to cancer, she spirals into a depression that takes her a long time to recover from. Her boyfriend had already left her and her superiors stopped communicating with her, leaving her adrift. The novel follows her from childhood through her 40s, all the while documenting her deadpan reflections on human society. She takes a similar approach to all aspects of her life leading me to wonder if she is actually a neurodivergent or schizophrenic person who has simply fantasized her alien experiences. The final communications from her superiors and the book's conclusion leave everything up in the air, providing a lot of food for thought.