A Quitter's Paradise

Product Information

I loved the way the author alternated between current day Eleanor and the stories of her family that explain so much about why she is the way she is. I was more interested in the POV of Eleanor Liu, the main character who hides lots of secrets and has a troubled relationship with her mother even after her passing, and I wish we had the chance to follow her a bit more into her present and her future choices (will she stay with her husband?

We mostly examine this from the perspective of how hurts women - either self-inflicted or by partaking in social conventions like marriage, having children, where it doesn't seem to inflict as much damage on their male counterparts.The present time storyline was definitely more engaging, and I wished the book had focused more on that (Eleanor's relationship with her husband, her affair with their co-worker Samir, and the rodent she stole from the lab). A riveting, wise, and singular novel about grief, love, longing, and the mysteries of family, A Quitter’s Paradise will linger in your heart and mind. A masterpiece that wrangles several lifetimes of wisdom, loss, and heartbreak into a slim novel you can clutch to your chest, pass on to your sharpest, most mercurial friends, and say: read this, feel this!

But there are larger themes of forgiveness running throughout the book, primarily regarding Lito’s father and the priest; Lito and the priest; Lito and his father; Lito’s son and his father. However, I think there are readers who will still enjoy "A Quitter's Paradise", since the writing flows well and is very accessible. asks] what it means for a first-generation daughter to stop striving, to want a meaningful life on different terms. In 2013 New York City, Eleanor Liu is on track to fulfill her late mother Rita’s low expectations, having dropped out of a neuroscience graduate program to work in her classmate-turned-husband’s lab. At the priest’s directive, father and son were ultimately divided again, and the entire experience left Lito scarred.

At the same time, she is conducting illegal experiments with mice from the lab, and if she gets caught, it could mean the end for her husband along with her. This is juxtaposed with chapters about Eleanor’s family’s story, focusing on her father and her mother. Our protagonist in A Quitter’s Paradise is Eleanor, a fourth year PhD student whose mother has just died.

In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own. Chang explores the surprising contours of grief and the strange shapes we makes around our grief as we heal. Women make choices to get themselves ahead by forging practical relationships and marrying, only to slowly be out manuevered and forced into a corner to forfeit their own work, motivations.These chapters enrich the characters by allowing space for their individual stories to be told and provide insight into how Eleanor’s upbringing influences her present life.