Author(s): Miranda Cowley Heller

Contemporary

Before anyone else is awake, on a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the glorious fresh water 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 a dinner party the previous evening; empty wine glasses, candle wax on the table cloth, 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 outside the house, as her husband and mother chatted to the dinner guests inside. So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and across 50 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 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life 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.

Jane's review:

Too often, once a novel hits our shelves, we don’t gift ourselves as booksellers, the time to read it with it then drifting closer to the bottom of the TBR pile.  Instead, we find ourselves reading three to six months in advance of publication dates driven through a combined desire to be able to talk about it once it hits our shelves together with the heady excitement of reading something that is not yet in the public domain.  So it is extremely unusual to be reading this post publication, but the interest people were showing drove me to dig into the pile.

The Paper Palace is Miranda Cowley Heller’s first novel but it reads like we’re in the hands of a seasoned storyteller with the vivid sense of place and depth of character the author creates.  As the story opens we find ourselves in Cape Cod a place where her family and others, have spent their summers for the last 50 years and where much of the story is set.  A dinner party is being held at the family home nicknamed ‘The Paper Palace’ for the cheap pressed paperboard their grandfather used in constructing the house - a perfect metaphor for the fragility of the human heart.  Our narrator Elle sneaks outside for a passionate encounter with childhood best friend Jonas. The ramifications that unfold from that one forbidden act over the following twenty-four hours are woven into a narrative of Elle’s infancy, childhood, adolescence and eventual marriage.  Her friendship with Jonas is bound by childhood summers together, but also a dreadful secret.

This family saga packed with intrigue and complicated characters, is best read in one or two sittings to keep pace with the split timelines.  Read it before it becomes a TV adaption as it is surely will given the author’s background working for a decade as Head of Drama Series at HBO.