A Quitter's Paradise

Product Information

Their friendship blossoms as they help each other, offering support, hard truths, and loving backup. The writing in this one is fairly accessible; I finished the book over the course of two days while I was in vacation in California. Let me start by saying that this book is so beautifully written and charming, that I'm already a fan of Elysha Chang.

Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. The story resides at the muddled intersection of grief, disillusionment, and complacency with surprising clarity. Some authors I simply cannot get into their writing style, or even how they lay out their storylines, and while I did not absolutely love this novel, I thought the writing was well done. Rather than confront her grief and the ways she’s complicated her own life, she allows her actions to put her job and relationship in jeopardy. 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!This book went nowhere, the characters were unlikable, and there is seemingly no ending to any of the plot arcs.

As grief isn't relentless, its fragments are scattered throughout the story, reminding ones the several facets of this sentiment. We also follow from the viewpoints of each of her parents in Taipei before they came to the US, before having had any children, and from Eleanor's sister's vantage point.The present-day storyline is told in first person, while the past is told in third person, giving a more omniscient view into Eleanor’s parents’ interiority. They also offer up the idea that her parents’ experiences have had an impact on her life through the ways they inform the advice they give her. A Quitter's Paradise, debut novel of Elysha Chang, follows a young woman's journey to make sense of herself, to find who she is and what she wants, and to process the grief she holds inside her heart after the death of her mother.