The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

This was the Tipsy Mamas’ Book Club’s pick for this month, and I would have loved to join them for the discussion.  I know I need to find a new book club here where I am now, but I find myself dragging my feet.  I met a mom recently who invited me to her book club, although she wasn’t the host so it was that weird “I’m sure it would be okay if you came” type of invitation.  I decided to wait a few more weeks to get to know the moms better first.

So instead, I picked up a title that my local library was set to discuss.  Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid was definitely the light, end of summer type of read I had in mind – as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by my kids’ intense fall schedule, and which orthodontist to hire, among other things, and really just needed an escape at the end of the day.  However, in my experience, library book clubs tend to attract mostly geriatric women, and since there was a lot of sex among 20-somethings in Reid’s book, I decided I wanted to meet this new crowd within the confines of a more serious text.  Then again, once I finished the book, I really wanted to discuss the ending with someone, so if any of you have read this book, please reach out to me so we can chat.  (Did it fall flat to you?  Why were there now consequences to the fire?)

The thing is, there probably was a lot to discuss in even this “light” read, and if I would admit it, my biggest hangup about going to the book club was that it was new.  

It’s been a long time since I’ve been new, and I don’t like it at all.  So for this month, I decided to hang on to the Cambridge crew.​

The Paper Palace delves into some challenging material.  Twice I thought about closing the book because I didn’t want to read about the characters being abused, and also because I didn’t want to sit with them in their pain.  There were a couple of characters who I was expecting to be more developed, but for the main ones, the author goes deep.  Like Sea of Tranquility, this novel is masterfully woven, though across the lifetime of one character instead of across centuries.  Unlike Mandel’s novel though, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the ending here.  If you’ve read this one, please drop me a line to discuss.  Does Elle make a choice at the end of the book or not?  And if so, what choice is that?

Happy discussion, Cambridge!  I miss you!