AUTHOR: Marie-Helen Bertino
I chose this book to read under the impression it's science fiction, a label supported by kudos on the back cover. By my standards for science fiction, the book fails on that account. That doesn't, however, negate the emotional impact of the story.
Adina Giorno, born in Philadelphia in 1977, is, as the premise states, is an alien from a far distant planet, sent to Earth to report on humans. Adina sends her brief accounts via a fax machine she and her single mother somehow acquire. How the fax works, why the aliens answer in English, isn't made clear. When she sleeps, she enters the "night classroom," where her superiors instruct her. Why they don't take her reports then is never considered as I can recall. Other than her instructions from the aliens and their brief, often cryptic replies to her faxes, the book could very well be a simple coming-of-age tale of an alienated girl trying to fit in and failing.
The book is written in a series of vignettes, covering four decades, with Adina's reports reading like diary entries at times. Her observations of human behavior are incisive and poetic. And when one of her few friends discovers the faxes and talks her into getting them published, Adina finally goes public with her true self.
Ultimately, I believe, the truth of who or what Adina is is up to each reader's interpretation, no matter what Bertino intended. This is a beautiful, simply told story about someone who doesn't fit society's expectations, but it isn't science fiction by most definitions.
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