"Out on the pond the water is absolutely still. A fish jumps and, in its wake, leaves a trail of concentric circles. I watch them bleed out and around the edges until they are reabsorbed, as if nothing ever happened." 🌊🐟
March's read for #kindlecrushchallenge was The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, another book that's been missing in the depths of my Kindle for a few years! 📚 I enjoyed this book the more I read it. It's definitely a slow-burner, flicking between twenty-four hours in the present day and back in Elle's childhood. ⏳
It's a great work of literary fiction where Miranda leaves the reader wondering what on earth it is that they've just digested. 🤔 It wasn't until I was probably a quarter of the way in that I settled into the rhythm of the story and began to enjoy it, if indeed you can enjoy a book with so many disturbing triggers! 😬
The ending has been left to the reader's imagination - I think - at least that's the way I understood it. Personally I'd have liked it wrapped up a little better, but it was still a good book and another one ticked off my Kindle backlist. ✔️📖
A very belated thank you to NetGalley and Penguin UK for the opportunity to read and review The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller. 🙏
About the Book
It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace"—the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside.
Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives.
As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.
About Miranda
Miranda Cowley Heller was raised in New York. After graduating from Harvard she became a book editor, before working for a decade at HBO where she was head of drama series. She divides her time between Los Angeles, London and Cape Cod. The Paper Palace is her first novel. It was longlisted for the Women's Prize, was a Sunday Times and #1 New York Times bestseller.
