Our latest Book Club Meeting was held on a chilly but beautifully sunny afternoon at The Queen’s Hotel, Penzance. It was Miranda’s debut novel – she has a descriptive style of writing and sets the scene extremely well throughout the story – some of the members felt that the abuse aspect of the story fashioned how the characters in the story behaved but most of the members did like the book very much. Many expressed that there was a great observation of nature and of human behaviour. Some not able to attend the meeting wished they could have been there for the discussion.
The Paper Palace
It is a perfect July morning and Ellie (Eleanor) a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three awakens at ‘The Paper Palace’, the family’s summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. This morning is different; last night Ellie and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time all while their spouses chatted away inside.
Now, over the next 24 hours Ellie will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband Peter and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t changed the course of their lives.
The author lays out the experiences that have led Ellie to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity the legacies of abuse and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.
Crowlas & Ludgvan WI 