Bøker av Marie-Helene Bertino

'One of the best books I have read this year' KALIANE BRADLEY, Guardian'A perfect little polished garnet of a novel' New York TimesEven as a child, Adina Giorno knows that she is different. She is from a faraway planet.Born at the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, Adina is a baby of unusual perception. Tiny and jaundiced, she reaches for warmth and light. She stumbles through her first years on Earth until a fax machine arrives at home, enabling her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.As she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her observations with the world. Is there a chance there are others like her out there?A Guardian and New York Times best book of the year, Beautyland introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times. It is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life in our universe.5-STAR READER REVIEWS:'This is a rare book where the concept and execution are both pitch perfect...I loved this''A stunner. Quirky, poignant, magical, heartbreaking - I loved it''Weeping, yelling, sending faxes. I loved this beautiful book so much''A beautiful, gentle story, for every person who has ever felt like an alien among all the humans''One of the best things I've ever read... What a special, special book''A book that I will recommend to people for the rest of my life' DAKOTA JOHNSON'It's impossible for a book to feel this fun and this urgent. Beautyland is a miracle. I'll be rereading it forever' KAVEH AKBAR'Beautiful and hilarious and transcendent... Bertino is an other-worldly talent' TOMMY ORANGE

A Best Book of 2020 at Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Refinery29 A Best Book of Summer at Vulture, Refinery29, Yahoo! Life, Alma, Subway Book Review, and Lit HubA Best Book of the Month at Entertainment Weekly, Hello Giggles, and PopSugarEDITORS' CHOICE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize"Miraculous: spry and mordant, with sentences that lull you with their rhythms, then twist suddenly and sting." -Lauren Groff, author of Florida"A twisting, strange delight, Parakeet shimmers a soft and generous light on the darkest of a woman's innermost thoughts." -Kristen Iversen, Refinery29Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried. A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change? Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.

Madeleine Altimari is a sassy, smart-mouthed nine-year-old and an aspiring jazz singer, inwardly mourning the recent death of her mother. Little does she know that on Christmas Eve Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day - and night - of her life. After bravely facing down some mean-spirited classmates and a galling rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she's determined to make her on-stage debut. Meanwhile, her fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Jack Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever . . . As these three lost souls search for love, music and hope on the snow-covered streets of Philadelphia, together they will discover life's endless possibilities over the course of one magical night. A vivacious, charming and moving debut, 2am At The Cat's Pajamas will swell your heart and have you laughing out loud.