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A review by kimbofo
Paradise Estate by Max Easton
4.0
Max Easton’s Paradise Estate practically pulses with modern-day life. It’s been a long time since I read a book that felt so “of the moment”.
This shouldn’t be a surprise given it’s set in 2022, but its unabashed widescreen examination of the issues facing Millennials — a generation grappling with a precarious job market, unaffordable housing and soaring student debt — gives it a meaning (and a complexity) sorely lacking in so many other contemporary novels I’ve read this year.
There’s so much to unpick in this multi-faceted story.
It explores everything from late capitalism to gentrification, poor working conditions to the housing crisis, and sets it against a wider backdrop of global political upheaval — the rise of the far right across Europe and the US, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza — climate-induced catastrophes and the COVID pandemic.
And it does so in such an effortless way by putting a very human face on it and showing how larger, systematic issues play out on a personal level and how Australians, isolated from the rest of the world, exist in a bubble of complacency so desperately in need of being burst!
The story is set in Sydney’s inner west at the tail end of the pandemic. There’s not much of a plot. Instead, Paradise Estate follows the lives of a group of disparate, mainly working-class 30-somethings living in a share house over the course of a year.
As ever with a share house, there are unspoken tensions, petty disputes and incidental privacy breaches between housemates, but there are budding romances and strong friendships too.
In the past, share houses were typically for students and younger people, but these tenants are all in their 30s. They’ve been priced out of the property market and the only way to make the soaring rent affordable is to split it with others.
It’s the characters that make this novel so vivid and alive. They’re well drawn and distinctive (apart from Beth, who is the only vague one), and Easton tells their various stories in a seamless third-person narrative that switches focus from chapter to chapter.
These chapters are interspersed with small vignettes, usually no more than half a page, to give us a more intimate glimpse into what a certain character may be thinking or feeling.
It’s the conversations between characters that allow Easton to explore issues relating to class, the economy, politics and society, and to do it in a non-judgmental, this is how it is way.
Occasionally, the sections on underground music feel a bit clumsy, but on the whole, this chronicle of communal living is an exhilarating read.
Paradise Estate is a follow-up to Easton’s The Magpie Wing, which was longlisted for last year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award, but it works as a standalone.
This shouldn’t be a surprise given it’s set in 2022, but its unabashed widescreen examination of the issues facing Millennials — a generation grappling with a precarious job market, unaffordable housing and soaring student debt — gives it a meaning (and a complexity) sorely lacking in so many other contemporary novels I’ve read this year.
There’s so much to unpick in this multi-faceted story.
It explores everything from late capitalism to gentrification, poor working conditions to the housing crisis, and sets it against a wider backdrop of global political upheaval — the rise of the far right across Europe and the US, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza — climate-induced catastrophes and the COVID pandemic.
And it does so in such an effortless way by putting a very human face on it and showing how larger, systematic issues play out on a personal level and how Australians, isolated from the rest of the world, exist in a bubble of complacency so desperately in need of being burst!
The story is set in Sydney’s inner west at the tail end of the pandemic. There’s not much of a plot. Instead, Paradise Estate follows the lives of a group of disparate, mainly working-class 30-somethings living in a share house over the course of a year.
As ever with a share house, there are unspoken tensions, petty disputes and incidental privacy breaches between housemates, but there are budding romances and strong friendships too.
In the past, share houses were typically for students and younger people, but these tenants are all in their 30s. They’ve been priced out of the property market and the only way to make the soaring rent affordable is to split it with others.
It’s the characters that make this novel so vivid and alive. They’re well drawn and distinctive (apart from Beth, who is the only vague one), and Easton tells their various stories in a seamless third-person narrative that switches focus from chapter to chapter.
These chapters are interspersed with small vignettes, usually no more than half a page, to give us a more intimate glimpse into what a certain character may be thinking or feeling.
It’s the conversations between characters that allow Easton to explore issues relating to class, the economy, politics and society, and to do it in a non-judgmental, this is how it is way.
Occasionally, the sections on underground music feel a bit clumsy, but on the whole, this chronicle of communal living is an exhilarating read.
Paradise Estate is a follow-up to Easton’s The Magpie Wing, which was longlisted for last year’s Miles Franklin Literary Award, but it works as a standalone.