The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

 

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller.

Published 8th July 2021 by Viking.

From the cover of the book:

Before anyone else is awake, on a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the glorious freshwater pond below 'The Paper Palace' -- the gently decaying summer camp in the back woods of Cape Cod where her family has spent every summer for generations. As she passes the house, Elle glances through the screen porch at the uncleared table from the dinner the previous evening; empty wine glasses, candle wax on the tablecloth, echoes of laughter of family and friends. Then she dives beneath the surface of the freezing water to the shocking memory of the sudden passionate encounter she had the night before, up against the wall behind the house, as her husband and mother chatted to the guests inside.

So begins a story that unfolds over twenty-four hours and across fifty years, as decades of family legacies, love, lies, secrets, and one unspeakable incident in her childhood lead Elle to the precipice of a life-changing decision. Over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the world she has made with her much-loved husband, Peter, and the life she imagined would be hers with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives.

Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace is a masterful novel that brilliantly illuminates the tensions between desire and safety; the legacy of tragedy, and the crimes and misdemeanours of families.

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One perfect August morning, we find Elle Bishop taking a morning swim in the freshwater pond at 'The Paper Palace', the decaying camp in the back woods on Cape Cod, where her family have spent their summers for generations. 

This is a place steeped in memories for Elle, both good and bad, but this year, having come to terms with the guilt and shame about traumatic events from her past, she finds herself facing a difficult decision about where her life goes from this point. Should she continue on the path she has made with her loving husband Peter, and their children, or leave them behind and try to regain something the life she might have had with her childhood sweetheart Jonas?

As the story of unfolds over the next 24 hours, Elle weighs her feelings, trying to make a decision about what she really wants, and her narrative is broken up by events from the past fifty years that tell of a legacy of family secrets, lies, terrible losses, and the incidents of her childhood that changed the expected course of her life - bringing her to this pivotal moment.

The Paper Palace is a quietly devastating novel, exploring how the weight of past misdeeds, childhood trauma, and the repeating pattern of maladjusted family behaviour can shape us into the adults we become. There is a lot of darkness and emotion in this book, as the years are stripped away, revealing the shocking history of this family, and dragging Elle's painful memories from the deepest recesses of her mind - and Cowley Heller is unflinching in the way she flays each and every moment to the bone, while deftly enhancing the experience of what you are reading with haunting symbolism in the environment and weather around her characters.

The way Cowley Heller incorporates some extremely thought provoking themes into this story is really rather interesting. While a love triangle in itself may not be a new concept, I thoroughly enjoyed the way she plays with the notion of desire, contrasting the passionate bond Elle has forged with Jonas based on their shared guilt at knowing the truth, and the safe comfortable love based on half-truths that she has with Peter. Can you ever truly make a fresh start without coming to terms with the guilt and shame you carry with you about your past actions, and what form might this absolution take? Can you ever go back to pick up the threads of a life that was denied to you by tragedy? How much are the self-serving behaviours of your forebears ingrained in the way you make your own decisions - even if you acknowledge the pain they have caused in your own life? Lots to delve into here.

This is the kind of story that compels you to read on through the emotional highs and lows, not allowing you to look away even for a second, despite the numerous distressing scenes, because the writing is so good - and even though I was unsure about ending of the story, it definitely carries through the message of the piece that life can be a very messy business.

If you like your novels to be many layered, intelligently constructed, and highly emotive, then this is definitely going to be a book for you - and it would make a great choice for a reading group or book club, because there is so much to dissect about what happens in these pages. Highly recommended!

The Paper Palace is available to buy now from your favourite book retailer in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Alexia Thomaidis at Penguin for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Miranda Cowley Heller was raised in New York. After graduating from Harvard she became a books editor, before working for a decade as Head of Drama Series at HBO. She divides her time between Los Angeles, London and Cape Cod. The Paper Palace is her first novel.