A Quitter's Paradise

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This adds some key context to the decisions and guilt that Eleanor fields, on top of the grief, of having quit everything she—and her mother—had dreamed of her doing.

Sarah Jessica Parker Launches Her New Literary Imprint

The narrative switches between three time periods were sometimes rather difficult to follow, partly due to the Chinese names which were unfamiliar to me. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.As an avid reader and a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker’s former imprint SJP for Hogarth, I knew this story would be captivating, thought-provoking, and fresh, expanding my perspective beyond measure. Still, I would like to think it provides a level of understanding and, if not that a nice steppingstone to great conversations with friends whose families have immigrated to the US. According to her new husband, Ellis, at least—her marriage to whom Eleanor hasn’t yet shared with her mother, Rita.

A Quitter’s Paradise – Books and Mischief A Quitter’s Paradise – Books and Mischief

I read on the subway’ I read waiting for meetings; I read while I’m waiting for someone to log on to a Zoom. She ends up pregnant after quitting the program, but their marriage seems to be rocky from the fact he simply gets everything and she struggles. Flynn has her own eponymous imprint with Zando; its first book, Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy, launched in February, and Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s The Centre will be out in July. At a lunch for A Place for Us, you said that you had a certain anxiety about coming into the book world feeling like you were a reader and not an editor, and that you were worried that people wouldn’t take the imprint seriously. Soon, those characters bloomed to play a larger role than simply being in service of Eleanor’s narrative: A pair of brothers, decades earlier, became estranged during the Chinese Civil War, with one growing up in China and the other Taiwan; the origin story of the relationship between Eleanor’s parents, Rita and Jing, comes to light.Eleanor quits her PhD program in neuroscience; Narisa disappears for good while a teen, after one too many fights with her disapproving parents. But I can walk into my little room where I keep my treasure trove of books, and I will tell you what I've been collecting. And so I did, initially, just start looking for other sources of information—from her sister, her parents. At the same time, glimpses of Eleanor’s childhood and family history unfurl, revealing long-held secrets, and Eleanor starts to realize that she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts.

A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysa Chang - Ashley Hajimirsadeghi A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysa Chang - Ashley Hajimirsadeghi

I think the closest comparison you could compare this book to is Disorientation, which is about another PhD student trying to uncover a secret about a Chinese poet she’s studying.Likewise some of the secrets the family kept close were culturally different perhaps from the secrets more common in Western literature, but all of this is why it is so good to read well-written novels by people from cultures not our own. And at some point I understood, I’m not getting more information out of her—that’s part of her charm, right? The book has a dual timeline POV and I think both worked well, though I was most compelled by the present storyline. Some authors I simply cannot get into their writing style, or even how they lay out their storylines, and while I did not absolutely love this novel, I thought the writing was well done. After a series of incidents—and some questionable choices—it becomes clear that no matter how hard Eleanor tries, she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts.