Jeatherhane Reads's Reviews > Beautyland

Oof! I have to be more careful about what I read. And also, did I read the same novel as everyone else?

This novel was so heavy, it threatened to drag me down into despair. I was already sinking a bit this week, and listening to this book about the pointlessness of human existence didn’t exactly lift me up.

It helped that the writing was detached to the point of almost clinical as Adina, who believes she is sent to Earth to study humans, catalogues the endless banality and pettiness of people. It’s so bad that eventually she begs her “superiors”, via fax machine, to “please, please come get me. I’m done done done”

I kept waiting for the joy to come. I spent 97% of the book feeling no emotion except hopelessness, only to sob for about three pages and then the story came to an abrupt end.