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In the interest of getting everything out of my drafts and into a permanent location, here, in no particular order, are some thoughts on Beautyland. Might be added to.

I love the “narrow focus” of the book, and of Adina’s life in general. Other than Toni and Dominic and Butternut and to a lesser degree, her mother and Miguel, relationships aren’t that significant, when a lesser book would pivot around them. Her meeting with her dad took all of two pages, and registered as barely a speed bump in her life. She didn’t travel, except for the one aborted attempt (which redeemed itself), didn’t experience the wideness of the world—but what she witnessed was just as meaningful as seeing the Taj Mahal, or Grand Canyon, or experiencing something equally transcendent with respect to other people. Her life was majestically ordinary, and dignifies all such lives to everyone who reads the story. I think that may be the book’s real genius.

I was frustrated with Miguel in particular, and I can understand how Adina felt let down in her desperation to find someone like her, or, barring that, to at least be believed. Initially, he seemed to take her reality seriously, but eventually couldn’t cop to it. The terrifying thing, for those of us who resonate with Adina’s struggle in the midst of our own perspective on the world, is that maybe Miguel did take at face value that it was her truth in the beginning—but eventually drifted away, or some prior framework of understanding reality crept back in over the course of their time together. And that could happen to any of us. How do you forge a long-term relationship with anyone when both parties are so allied to their vision of truth? You can fake it for a while, but eventually, you’ll both drift back to your respective truths. Or at least, that’s what happens if neither party decides to swim against the inevitable current and adjust their perspective to cohere with their partner’s OR begins with enough points of intersection that the small divergences are, in the long run, easily overcome. Part of my frustration with Miguel stemmed from my own approach to taking my kids’ interests seriously. When you’re young (or remain “young”), those interests are your reality; those characters, story arcs, scenarios, etc are just as substantial as anything happening in the real world, and deserve to be treated as such. Why couldn’t Miguel believe Adina? I don’t know that even Toni did—even though she affirmed her to the end (and beyond).

Fundamentally, the failure of the others in Adina’s life to buy into the of-course-ness of her reality is what frustrated me the most. But obviously, that’s easy for me to say, given my semi-omniscient perspective as reader; I should probably have more sympathy for those in Adina’s orbit, and it motivates me to extend that sympathy towards others I encounter in real life who may exhibit a similarly unorthodox perspective on reality. And whether or not Adina is a reliable narrator is beside the point; the book communicates her Locus of Truth in matter-of-fact terms, and we don’t need to know if there’s an actual correspondence between objective reality and her daily routine. I like that the book leaves this ambiguous.

If I had to nitpick, I would take issue with some aspects of the ending, like the directive to use a single word to describe the Earth being a bit cliché. It seems like an on-the-nose appeal to include readers, something tailor-made for book discussions.  Why not just let the story be what it is? It feels a little preachy, and that meta aspect pops the story’s bubble somewhat and undermines its effectiveness. But, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a minor quibble.

Here are some favorite quotes:

• When you’re little, sadness is a kid you can kick out of your game. A simple, fast-food feeling that leaves as soon as the bully is gone. Deeper sadnesses get buried into one’s coastal shelf, accessible only by your adult version.
• “People want to read what they already know.”
  “Why would they want to read what they already know?”
  “Comfort! Stability!”
  “I can add more about the grass?”
• When you’re alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it. As it moves through you, you can reach out your hands and feel every edge. When it passes and you can drink coffee again you even miss it because it has been loyal to you like a boyfriend.
• The flight attendant’s voice startles her. He has returned to crouch beside her.
  “After reaching cruising altitude,” he says, “nothing can force a plane out of the sky. So what are you afraid of? Wind or engine failure?”
  “Staying the same forever,” she says. “And wind.”
• Her past passions sound tinny when clinking against the jar of time. But they add up to a stack next to her elbow, a growing collection of desire and insight that might acquire significance if she trusts that it will.
• “I’m sorry,” Adina says, her sound of the night.
  “I’m sorry,” Toni says. “I should have made the invisible conversation visible. I’m trying to get better at that.”
• Optimism is a sign of class.
• Human beings spend their lives pretending their parents are people with no needs. They do not want their moms to talk about sex or die.
• Hobbies are a way of staying present so humans do not have to think about death.
• Red wine tastes like a dark-walled library and white wine smells like a woman looking away.
• …Miguel says it’s the best he’s ever had about the grilled cheese and she says, really, the best, okay, and he says, “I mean it, sister, best ever,” and Adina knows she will have to deal with every ugly thing she’s been ignoring to be half as good as he deserves and this makes her tired in advance…
• She longs to compel across space like a wish. You’re barely finished making it and you’re already above the tree line, pumping into the incalculable banks of clouds.
• Dogs are the best we can do.
• She crumples the reply and throws it into the trash. It’s easy to hurl observations when they are centuries away.
• Toni pulls her cardigan tighter. The worrisome stars of her collarbones show through the faded material, her drastic elbows.
• After a spiraling conversation that lands far from its original intent, he says, “Maybe the part of you that wants to be alone is bigger than the other parts of you.”
• Adina knows that distance blurs feeling and intent.
• Human beings design irrigation systems that carry water billions of miles but cannot invent an ironing board that opens without sounding like a metal seizure.
• Grief has de-clarified him, as if someone has used an eraser to smudge his features.
• Human beings rip their addresses off old magazines when they donate them to hair salons. This is how criminals find their victims: They search stacks of People magazines. If they find one where the address has been left on, they think: What a fool. I will go to her house and murder her.
• Perhaps she’s never been anything other than lonely. Loneliness is a composite feeling: ironically unable to exist alone. It can contain anger, hunger, fear, jealousy. Adina had misidentified it for homesickness for her planet but it also meant restlessness when one is not in the place they long for. The most content she ever felt was with Toni and the little dog. Where are they? Where are they?
• Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.
• [About Butternut] He never lay coldly next to her after an argument, never subtracted himself when his ego was bruised.
• She has not prepared for no bagels.
• She wonders what other rational human qualities she wrote off as extraterrestrial because of a human’s tendency to other what they don’t understand.
• These new humans stroller over the death it took Adina forever to fall in love with. Nothing new can replace what takes years to build.
• The moment of silence under an overpass when driving in a storm. […] the dog in the park in the sun catching the ball and bringing it back, flashing between his people like a gem. The night Toni said, “Let’s wear our weather earrings and go to Whole Foods and say things like, ‘I just love ramps, don’t you?'”
• Language is pitiable when weighted against experience.
• By far, those who cause the most damage are humans who promise to be some kind of home and are not.

Many (most?) of those hit very close to home. Too close. And the above is only a small selection of what earthquaked me as I read. It really is a staggering achievement of a book.