Beings
A Novel
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- 17,99 €
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- 17,99 €
Publisher Description
"The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Ilana Masad excavates the juiciness of historical archives and the otherworldly mysteries of the everyday in her most brilliant work yet." –Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
Named a "Most Anticipated Book" by the LA Times, Washington Post, Autostraddle, Town and Country, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, and The Millions
In 1961, an interracial couple drove through the dark mountains of New Hampshire when a mysterious light began to follow them. Years later, through hypnosis, they recalled an unbelievable brush with extraterrestrial life. Unintentionally, a genre was born: the alien abduction narrative.
In Ilana Masad's Beings, the couple's experience serves as one part of a trio of intertwined threads: Known only by their roles as husband and wife, Masad explores the pair's trauma and its aftermath and questions what it means to accept the impossible. In the second thread, letters penned by a budding science-fiction writer, Phyllis, to her beloved, Rosa, expose the raw ache of queer yearning, loneliness, and alienation in the repressive 1960s-as well as the joy of finding community. In the present day, a reclusive and chronically ill Archivist attempts to understand a strange forgotten childhood encounter while descending into obsession over both Phyllis's letters and the testimony of the first alien abductees.
Over the course of a decade, Phyllis wrestles with her desires and ambitions as a lesbian writer, while the abducted couple grapple with how to maintain control of their narrative. All the while, the archive shatters and reforms, redefining fact and fiction via the stories left behind by the abductees, Phyllis, and the Archivist themself. Masad makes human what is alien and makes tangible what is hidden – sometimes by chance and sometimes intentionally – in the archive.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Encounters with aliens set the stage for a novel that’s a far cry from ordinary science fiction. In Beings, Ilana Masad weaves together three seemingly unrelated narratives. In the early 1960s, a couple are briefly abducted by creatures from a UFO, changing their lives in ways they never could have imagined. Around the same time, a gay woman writes letters to her former lover about her life in a new city, her dreams of becoming a writer, and the passion (and occasional anger) she still feels for her ex. And many years later, an archivist finds themselves gathering background data relating to both stories, discovering surprising areas of overlap. Masad gives each story a distinct feel of its own, and her characters and their lives feel real and relatable no matter how unusual their experiences. It’s a story about love and the unexpected that’s powerful and truly unique.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Masad (All My Mother's Lovers) spins an affecting tale of aliens, alienation, and archives. It's anchored by the workday assignments and converging obsessions of an assistant at a library, known only as the Archivist, who begins reading a manuscript about real-life interracial couple Barney and Betty Hill. In 1961, the Hills claimed to be abducted by aliens in the New Hampshire woods upon returning from their honeymoon in Canada. The manuscript, held in the library's Queer Writers Archive, embellishes the story of the media-shy couple, who gained notoriety among UFO followers. The Archivist also reads letters addressed by lesbian Phyllis Egerton, who left her homophobic mother in 1962 New Hampshire to start a new life as a proofreader at a Boston newspaper and aspired to become a science fiction author, to her estranged girlfriend. The material gives the Archivist solace as they deal with chronic pain from a genetic disorder and angst at a world that doesn't always accommodate their gender nonconformity. Moreover, the story of the Hills reminds the Archivist, who also hails from New Hampshire, of their own close encounter with aliens as an elementary school student in 1996. The interconnected narratives reveal the power of stories and archival material to reach across time and help an isolated person find themselves. Readers will be swept away.
