The Paper Palace

★★★☆☆

IThe ‘Paper Palace,’ named for is papery walls, is the beloved Cape Cod holiday home of the Bishops. Having visited every summer for generations, the Paper Palace holds a very special place for all who call it a home away from home. One fateful August day, Elle succumbs to a decades-long yearning for a life and love she feels she’s missed. What follows is the unfolding of her life and the events that have led her to this day and a decision she must make.

Miranda Cowley Heller’s exquisite prose throughout The Paper Palace is something one would expect from a seasoned author. Remarkably, this is her debut novel. It is a complicated story of love, loyalty, family, and friendship. Set against a backdrop so beautifully described, we could almost feel the break of the pond’s cool water every time our protagonist went for a swim. Clearly a fan of the slow burn, Heller created a world where the reader couldn’t resist being captivated by Elle’s complicated, beautiful life.

However, there were some themes and storylines that we struggled with. At times, it felt that scenes of trauma and victimhood were used to almost excuse Elle and Jonas’s behaviour. While characters are not always meant to be liked, readers should at least be able to follow why they behave or act in a certain way. But, when we do eventually come to understand Elle’s behaviour, it almost felt too late. Especially when characters are continually presented in a moralistic binary: Conrad bad, Jonas good. Peter good, Elle bad. Heller seems to spend a lot of time excusing Elle’s behaviour – you can go through horrifying trauma and still be a shitty person for cheating on your husband (IMO). Pitting perfect Peter against free-spirited Jonas seemed unfair and totally unrealistic.

Similarly, the dual timelines were difficult to follow; it wasn’t until our discussion that some of us realised the events in the present were of the course of only one day! Having two timelines seems to be a popular narrative technique right now with only a few writers able to pull it off. Unfortunately, for us, Heller isn’t one of them.

That said, the story carried us until the end where we were left an ambiguous ending that had us debating Elle’s decision all the way to brunch. A sign of an excellent Brunch Book Club book.