A Quitter's Paradise
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
This is juxtaposed with chapters about Eleanor’s family’s story, focusing on her father and her mother. The death of Eleanor’s mother has her questioning everything—her childhood, her marriage, her career. This pattern of lying and hiding started when she was a teenager, telling her parents she won second place in a science fair when in reality the judges were unimpressed with her entry. In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own. I’m excited and honored to publish A Quitter’s Paradise, the debut novel by standout literary talent Elysha Chang.
As grief isn't relentless, its fragments are scattered throughout the story, reminding ones the several facets of this sentiment. I had serious mixed feelings toward this book, with regard to both the story arc and the characters. And no one gets that more than these women — you’ll root for them as they reclaim their voices (even if you’re cringing just a little bit).Meanwhile, glimpses of Eleanor's childhood and family history in Taiwan unfurl, revealing long-held secrets, and Eleanor starts to realize that she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts. The writing itself was quite good though, so I would definitely be interested in reading more from Elysha Chang in the future. Eleanor Liu is a “chronic avoider”—she runs from every difficulty life presents, but how long can she outrun grief?
The floundering in science and in romance, certain bits of wry prose, and Eleanor’s quirkiness and emotional stuntedness also reminded me of CHEMISTRY. A graduate of Columbia ’ s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman. Here, the themes include family fractures, working-class and undocumented immigrant lives, miscarriage (though underexplored), self-knowledge, parental expectations, and loss. Let me start by saying that this book is so beautifully written and charming, that I'm already a fan of Elysha Chang. In Eleanor and her family, Elysha Chang has created captivating characters, who continuously surprised, delighted, and intrigued me—so much so that I didn’t want to leave them.I’m pretty sure Chang and I had the same mom growing up, because she captures Eleanor’s mom with such emotional precision that I gasped several times. Now that her mother is gone, Eleanor—who acknowledges how much her mother’s approval and disapproval influenced her choices—must consider how to live her life and make sense of it on her own. Alternating between present and past, first and third person narration, the story follows the members of Liu family. A masterpiece that wrangles several lifetimes of wisdom, loss and heartbreak into a slim novel you can clutch to your chest, pass on to your sharpest, most mercurial friends and say: read this, feel this!
I loved the way the author alternated between current day Eleanor and the stories of her family that explain so much about why she is the way she is. I find the parental/child relationship hard to take, and more of a business than dictionary definition representation of family. In this story, Eleanor is trying to figure out her life with all the trappings (customs/traditions) in the United States. A riveting, wise, and singular novel about grief, love, longing, and the mysteries of family, A Quitter’s Paradise will linger in your heart and mind.Lito, the story’s dying protagonist, prepares his circuitous yarn by asserting “the best way to fit one story among other stories is, I think, always wise to consider. She has received fellowships and support from The Center For Fiction, Jerome Foundation, Kundiman, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Swatch Art Residency in Shanghai, Monson Arts, and Willapa Bay AIR. Their friendship blossoms as they help each other, offering support, hard truths, and loving backup.
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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