I wonder if he would love me if he could see inside my head - the pettiness, the dirty linen of my thoughts, the terrible things I have done.
The Paper Palace
by Miranda Cowley Heller
Genre: Contemporary
About: Elle loves her husband and their three children. But she also loves Jonas. After decades of longing, they finally come together for one passionate night. It's one more secret to add to a life and family full of them.
The Good
This is a deeply layered story that's perfect for a book group. Spanning generations, you're drawn into Elle's life and her complicated family history. It's told in an interesting way, has a lot of emotionally powerful moments and is brilliantly vivid to read. It's a compelling story that invites discussion.
The Bad
The prose can be somewhat difficult to get through. I liked the writing for the most part, but it leans towards being overly flowery and metaphorical and does so a bit too often for me not to be conscious of the writer on the page.
Perhaps the worst (or cleverest?) part was the ending. I hated it. The author says the ending is unambiguous (BEG TO DISAGREE) and that she hints at the end right at the beginning. If I look at the 6.30AM at the beginning, and the 6.30AM at the end, then the ending is obvious that Elle chooses Jonas. If I look at the book as a whole and accept the scenes leading up to the end then it's Peter. Elle's actions/words to Peter confirm she chooses him. Yet the first and last page are littered with bloody metaphors that hint at a completely different ending. One that didn't feel freeing to me, but deeply misleading.
The Somewhat Iffy
Conrad was the most iffy character. His descriptions are lazy: he has acne, short legs, he's fat... These descriptions are meant to elicit disgust from the reader when it's his actions that should be doing that, not the suggestion that he's physically unattractive. I mean his actions were insanely bad that it would have been more interesting to me if he'd been attractive on the outside and ugly on the inside.
Couldn't wrap my head around the idea that Conrad rapes his thirteen year old sister. He makes such a point that Elle is not his biological sister (incest = bad) but he chooses his sister to be the placeholder for Elle? And if his sister was so young, would her mother not have questioned what must have been a lot of blood the first night he rapes her?
Overall
There are a lot of topics that could be discussed with this book. The characters are interesting, the story has layers, and it will likely stick with me. A story meant to be discussed and debated.
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