Reviews with content warning for Infidelity - Паперовий палац

Fifty pages into The Paper Palace, I went searching for strangers’ reviews. Those I’d read before picking up a copy had been overwhelmingly positive about the story of middle-aged Elle, torn between her good-egg husband Peter and childhood sweetheart Jonah in the present while reflecting on a traumatic past. I found myself struggling a lot with it, and wondering if others had.

I don’t think there are subjects that should be off limits for fiction. Many of the one-star reviews I found of The Paper Palace seemed to attribute their low rating to instances of child abuse in the story. Initially, I thought this was an odd response – like rating the evening news one-star because the headlines are disturbing. However, having finished the book, it’s this element that is most problematic for me. Not that the author has written about such a harrowing subject at all, or necessarily that she’s framed it within a romance. But in my opinion, the treatment of multiple characters’ unthinkable childhood trauma isn’t appropriately sensitive, and at times verges on sensationalist.

Beyond that, I’m ambivalent. The back woods Cape Cod setting is vividly drawn, and so is Elle’s mouse-infested family camp – the paper palace of the title, symbolic of family legacy and inherited trauma – almost to the point of nausea. The few scenes in England, however, hit somewhere between a Richard Curtis romcom, Taylor Swift’s London Boy, and 1980s episodes of Eastenders. (“F*ck off, ya c*nt,” says Elle’s pig-faced mugger. “He’ll be a bit cross when he comes to,” pipes up Elle’s rescuer and plummy future husband Peter, who lamps the scoundrel and offers her a lift in his Land Rover.)

The wider characterisation, too, I found patchy. Several secondary players are stereotypes; Peter’s English parents ‘disapprove of’ Americans, and both Elle’s stepmothers are essentially wicked. Grown-up Jonah feels like a (horny) sketch. The perpetrator of the abuse is skin-crawlingly well rendered, though that contributed to my reservations about the treatment of that storyline.

Elle is hugely sympathetic as a child, and I appreciated that the author chose to portray a middle-aged woman getting steamy. But there are also a few scenes in which adult Elle is deeply unpleasant as a narrator. In the first she describes the woman behind the counter at Avis as acting like she thinks she ‘works at the post office’ and walking ‘slow as mud.’ In the second, she’s furious when she’s racing to a loved one’s bedside and the hospital elevator is set to stop at every floor because it’s Shabbat – she’s always considered herself a tolerant person, but… Perhaps these are intended to show us something about the steely determination of her survival mode, but to me they felt entitled, especially in the wider context of this book’s WASPy world.

I didn’t like it.

Content Warnings

alisonhp's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

So sad, but also so beautiful. I don’t know what to make of it all… the story or the ending. The first book was so hard for me — Elle seemed so cold, and then her story unfolded reminding me, as the best books do, that there is always more to a person’s story than what initially meets the eye. I’m glad I continued reading when I was thinking of putting it down.

Content Warnings

bookswithmybulldog's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

wally81481's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

pollyflorence's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

lc_allen's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

natalieba's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

happiestwhenreading's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Paper Palace wasn’t on my radar initially, but I got it in the mail from my Bookshelf Subscription (not an ad or sponsorship, I pay for this service with my own money!) and then I started to see it all over #bookstagram due to Reese Witherspoon choosing it for her July book. The exposure definitely made me move it to the top of my list.

I went into this one completely blind; I didn’t read any reviews and I didn’t read the synopsis. Instead, the story slowly unfolded before me and I’m so glad I didn’t know what I was getting into. This is a very complicated, dark story that explores themes of unrequited love, the damaging effects of secrets, and how certain events can change the course of one’s life.

The writing is beautiful; I’m surprised that this complex story was pulled off by a debut author. Cowley Heller wove two timelines – present day and the fifty years of Elle’s life – seamlessly and I was equally captured by both. As the secrets and darkness are revealed, the story became much more propulsive and compelling. This is not a light beach read; however, this is a great summer read due to the atmospheric setting of Cape Cod in the summer.

I would highly encourage sensitive readers to do some research before picking this one up, but if you can handle difficult topics, I’d recommend going in blind!

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