Beautyland by Marie Helene-Bertino:

Adina is born when Voyager 1 launches.  Her birth connects her to an alien civilisation and she reports back to them about life on Earth and how humans cope with it.  The novel follows her through life, love and loss. 

The best books I read last year (The Ministry Of Time, The Husbands, Rare Singles) all had a relatively simple idea, but had rich, mysterious depths.  Beautyland is in that class. It’s a strangely beautiful, beautifully strange book.  It’s expansive enough to have a neat framing structure (Adina’s life is structured alongside the life cycle of a star), but tricky enough to have some original ideas - Adina reports back to her masters using a second-hand fax machine for example.  

Plus, this is a novel that lives in the last half century of American history, but is not a nostalgia trip.  Overriding it all is something genuinely brave.  The concept that the aliens - a hive mind of souls - actually exist, or it is all a paracosm.  And although it is strongly suggested that both Adina is neurodiverse and asexual, Bertino does enough to suggest she is genuinely not of this earth.  

A light, yet nourishing and incredibly moving read.  It’s published by Random House on 27th March and I sincerely thank them for making me cry.  #beautyland