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Paradise
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When a dull neighbor asks Hannah Luckraft what she does for a living, Hannah can barely refrain from answering honestly: "Oh, a little theft, monstrosity, credit-card fraud, and my hobbies include giving blow jobs to unpleasant men while I'm semi-unconscious. I also drink a lot." With her fifth novel, Kennedy proves herself—again—to be a master of extracting searing beauty from patently ugly truths. Awash in whisky, 30-year-old narrator Hannah is the consummate professional screwup: she drinks with ferocity and harbors no pretenses about her self-destructive impulses or their horrendous consequences. Her wry, wary commentary has no right to be anything but gut-wrenchingly sad, yet her savage wit and chilling self-awareness transform even unspeakable misery into something howlingly funny. Blacking out becomes "master[ing] the art of escaping from linear time," rehab is reduced to "being slapped down into a grisly ring of pink Naugahyde armchairs and made to discuss [our] personal lives with a dozen emotional vampires" and paradise itself is revealed to be "an untouched bottle and the man who loves me, the man I love." Of course, Hannah knows that happiness can't last, so when a charming drunk named Robert stumbles into her life, her bed and her head, no one dares to hope for a happy ending. Their thirst for oblivion, sobriety and oblivion again is the story of paradise found and lost a thousand times over. "How it happens is a long story, always," but rarely is it so jaw-droppingly good as this. (Mar. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
If there’s one point of consensus in reviews of Kennedy’s latest novel, it’s that she is a masterful stylist. The fork in the road for critics of Paradise, the British author’s fifth U.S. release, is the subject matter. Her supporters are impressed that the book avoids a tumble into bleak self-pity. Hannah is a perceptive, funny guide to her own dissolution. But the detractors—a distinct minority—see Hannah’s ability to express herself and her inability to solve her problems as a narrative failure. In the end, this seems less a criticism of the book than a judgment about its main character. Maybe Paradise hits too close to home, but, if the ayes have it, that’s simply a testament to Kennedy’s skill.
Starred Review. When a dull neighbor asks Hannah Luckraft what she does for a living, Hannah can barely refrain from answering honestly: "Oh, a little theft, monstrosity, credit-card fraud, and my hobbies include giving blow jobs to unpleasant men while I'm semi-unconscious. I also drink a lot." With her fifth novel, Kennedy proves herself—again—to be a master of extracting searing beauty from patently ugly truths. Awash in whisky, 30-year-old narrator Hannah is the consummate professional screwup: she drinks with ferocity and harbors no pretenses about her self-destructive impulses or their horrendous consequences. Her wry, wary commentary has no right to be anything but gut-wrenchingly sad, yet her savage wit and chilling self-awareness transform even unspeakable misery into something howlingly funny. Blacking out becomes "master[ing] the art of escaping from linear time," rehab is reduced to "being slapped down into a grisly ring of pink Naugahyde armchairs and made to discuss [our] personal lives with a dozen emotional vampires" and paradise itself is revealed to be "an untouched bottle and the man who loves me, the man I love." Of course, Hannah knows that happiness can't last, so when a charming drunk named Robert stumbles into her life, her bed and her head, no one dares to hope for a happy ending. Their thirst for oblivion, sobriety and oblivion again is the story of paradise found and lost a thousand times over. "How it happens is a long story, always," but rarely is it so jaw-droppingly good as this. (Mar. 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
If there’s one point of consensus in reviews of Kennedy’s latest novel, it’s that she is a masterful stylist. The fork in the road for critics of Paradise, the British author’s fifth U.S. release, is the subject matter. Her supporters are impressed that the book avoids a tumble into bleak self-pity. Hannah is a perceptive, funny guide to her own dissolution. But the detractors—a distinct minority—see Hannah’s ability to express herself and her inability to solve her problems as a narrative failure. In the end, this seems less a criticism of the book than a judgment about its main character. Maybe Paradise hits too close to home, but, if the ayes have it, that’s simply a testament to Kennedy’s skill.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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