State of Paradise
A Novel
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Named a Most Anticipated Book by TIME, Oprah Daily, Esquire, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Marie Claire, ELLE, Bustle, and Lit Hub. An Apple Best Book of July. One of ELLE's Best Novels of 2024 So Far.
"A brilliant ghost story and a profoundly moving and atmospheric meditation on place, memory, and the very nature of reality, where everything is truly not as it seems." —Mona Awad, author of Rouge
"At once an adventure and a treat, a deep study of Florida's psychogeography and a creepy story about ghosts, missing people, cults, and technology. Don't miss it." —Gabino Iglesias, NPR
A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly from the celebrated Laura van den Berg
It’s another summer in a small Florida town. After an illness that vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived, everything appears to be getting back to normal: soul-crushing heat, torrential downpours, sinkholes swallowing the earth, ominous cats, a world-bending virtual reality device being handed out by a company called ELECTRA, and an increasing number of posters dotting the streets with the faces of missing citizens. Living in her mother’s home, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author tracks the eerie changes. On top of everything else, she’s contending with family secrets, spotty memories of her troubled youth, a burgeoning cult in the living room, and the alarming expansion of her own belly button.
Then, during a violent rainstorm, her sister goes missing. She returns a few days later, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension. Now the ghostwriter must investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author she works for, and reality itself.
A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of selfhood and storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise is an intricate and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, van den Berg reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Peculiar things are happening in the American South in Laura van den Berg’s darkly comic exercise in magic realism. An unnamed woman who ghostwrites adventure stories for a best-selling novelist gets stuck in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the rest of the world starts to open up, things in the Sunshine State keep getting stranger and more ominous. Swarms of lizards are everywhere, people disappear at a troubling rate, cults and militias run rampant, and our heroine’s belly button goes through unexpected changes. Meanwhile, a mysterious corporation has been distributing a virtual reality device to anyone who wants one, and their purpose may not be entirely benevolent. A frequently surreal study of American life in the 2020s, State of Paradise takes common anxieties and amplifies them in a fun-house mirror, where they become both funny and a bit terrifying. It’s a one-of-a-kind treat for adventurous readers.
