State of Paradise

by Laura van den Berg

A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly, from a reality-warping storyteller.

Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern—something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.

During a violent rainstorm, the writer’s sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.

A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s State of Paradise is an interlocking and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, she reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 9, 2024

About the author

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel, a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, one of Time Magazine’s 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and is a two-time finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Laura is currently a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard. Her next novel, State of Paradise, is forthcoming from FSG in July 2024. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

Reviews

[Cindy]

when u veer too far into litfic u end up in florida... shudder

[Rosh ~catching up slowly~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: A literary fiction that goes much beyond what the blurb indicates. Almost stream-of-consciousness in its plotting and too wild in its twists. Individual elements great, but didn't come together cohesively. Concentrating on the audio version was a chore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No personal ‘Plot Preview’ this time. I truly don’t know where to begin and what to include or exclude! Please read the GR blurb to know what the book is about.

On paper, this novel has many enticing elements: a dystopian feel with some strange technology, climate crises in Florida, extreme weather, missing persons mystery, dysfunctional family, ghostwriting and its perks and perils, covid pandemic, bizarre cults, asylum troubles, alternate dimensions, and absurd obsessions (thanks to the weird fascination that the protagonist has with her belly button and how deeply cavernous it has become.) Each of these topics has enough merit to deliver a whammy, but do they really fit well with each other? Can one 224-page novel do justice to so many distinct themes? In my humble opinion, no.

The Gestalt theory declares that the whole of anything is greater than the sum of its parts. In this book however, the individual parts are great, but the book feels too disjointed at the macro level. One main reason for this is the protagonist’s tendency to jump from topic to topic with no warning whatsoever. The resultant narrative feels like stream-of-consciousness verbiage, with no rhyme or reason to the flow. Stream-of-consciousness NEVER works for me, so there was no way to save this experience, especially in the audio format.

On the positive side, the descriptive writing is great. The author’s words are quite immersive and make us feel her character’s emotions well. The final quarter contains some unexpected revelations, which nudged up my rating. There are some intriguing characters as well, though I couldn’t relate to any of them.


🎧 The Audiobook Experience:
The audiobook, clocking at a little more than five and a half hours, is narrated by Megan Tusing. She does a great job, with her diction and her emotions well on target. But with the writing being so random, I simply couldn’t focus on the plot development. I don’t know if I can recommend the audiobook to everyone, but if you are comfortable with listening to stream-of-consciousness writing without losing your grasp of the underlying plotline, the audio version might work for you.


All in all, this book was not for me. It clicked in bits and pieces, but concentrating on the random musings was too tricky on audio.

Recommended to lit fic lovers who enjoy stream-of-consciousness writing with twisty but bizarre revelations.

2.5 stars. (Rounding down for the audio version.)


My thanks to Spotify Audiobooks for providing the ALC of “State of Paradise” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook. Sorry this didn’t work out better.

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[Jonas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading State of Paradise was an incredible experience. I highly recommend this book to all readers, but especially to those who like climate change/not-so-distant dystopian reads. If you loved The Light Pirate (like I did) then I think you will love State of Paradise too. Also for fans of Peripheral and Fringe. The pandemic plays a part in the narrative, but it plays a supporting role.

What I loved most about State of Paradise was it was not a typical transformative story. It was a story of family dynamics and relationships, but we witnessed the changes and transformations through their eyes. For some people, they have physically changed after having Covid. For others, they are mentally changed after using the Virtual Reality headset Mind’s Eye. We witness the physical, mental, and spiritual de-evolution and re-evolution of the people and state of Florida.

Laura van den Berg is a brilliant author. I immediately purchased two of her other books upon finishing State of Paradise. So many great quotes. Here are a few:

“When a story is told to another person, it takes on a life of its own; it spreads like a contagion.”

“Is our life just on pause or is this pause now our life?”

“I write about states of suffering and states of paradise and try to understand how a person can travel from one to the other.”

“Everything is a distraction from the most important thing.”

BIG issues explored: mental health, population vs resources, and technology. Smaller themes or reoccurring words are: ghosts, hive, wilderness, pilgrimage, portals, and utopias. Writing and words (and their meanings) play a big role in the narrative. I loved every aspect. There were so many great quotes about writing, but I won’t list them, I will let you discover them yourself. State of Paradise is a quick and compelling read. It has something for every reader.

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ This year I have listened to a LOT of audiobooks. I love it as a way to consume books/stories, but also recognize there are occasional drawbacks. In this case, despite a good narrator, I really feel the story would have been better enjoyed in its physical form (e-reader or print). It was just genuinely a challenge for me to stick with the storyline between listens, since it isn’t super easy to go back and be reminded of fine details.

"State of Paradise" by Laura van den Berg is a genre-blending novel (contemporary fiction —> science fiction) set in the sweltering, surreal environment of a Florida town during the pandemic. The protagonist, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author, returns with her husband to her childhood home, where she confronts family secrets, her sister's obsession with a virtual reality device, and the mysterious disappearance and return of townspeople.

The transition from contemporary fiction to science fiction took me a second to get used to as I was listening. But in particular, it was the style and organization of the book that made it difficult for me to fully engage with the story in audio form. Otherwise, I think the plot was intriguing and writing very strong. Specifically, the main character’s apathetic yet factual recounting of traumatic events is both a realistic portrayal of a trauma response and a deeply disturbing element that underscores the novel’s darker themes well.

Thanks to Netgalley, Spotify Audiobooks, Laura van den Berg, and Megan Tusing for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

My brain is fried atm, I got thaaangs going on. But for now, I’ll say that I’m always down for whatever’s going on in Laura van den Berg’s uncanny imagination.

A surreal allegory on the pandemic and trauma. An innovative look at the creative process. A cautionary tale on our alarming dependence on technology. The first half is pretty much realist fiction with a splash of sci-fi, and then the second half goes full-on bonkers, just the way I like it. It’s a weird one, one that I’m sure to devour on a future second reading.

Mistrust of technology. Pandemic trauma. Environmental crisis. Shady politics. Genre-bending meta fiction. This book is a fever dream.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The synopsis of State of Paradise sums it up so well, there’s almost no need to write a review at all. This does indeed depict a funhouse of uncanniness hidden in Florida’s underbelly and a sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling. Its narrator, who works as a ghostwriter of popular-but-trashy thrillers, has recently returned to her home state of Florida. She’s living with her mother and next door to her sister, who’s become addicted to MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality headset that was handed out free during the pandemic. It’s a time of increasingly extreme weather, and during one particularly apocalyptic storm, her sister disappears.

When the story starts, its contours seem familiar; van den Berg relies on that precise assumption to wrongfoot the reader. You might think you know what the narrator’s referring to when she talks about ‘the pandemic’, but then she describes some of the lasting side effects – her bellybutton has changed shape, her sister’s eyes are a different colour – and suddenly you’re wondering if this story is taking place within our world at all. Unfamiliarity with the setting adds a further sheen of weirdness to the whole thing (I imagine this book reads very differently if you’ve ever lived in Florida). This sense of a slightly altered world is key to State of Paradise’s mission. It’s a slippery story about stories – about how we rewrite our histories to empower (or deny) ourselves.

For me, it was all strongly reminiscent of Alexandra Kleeman’s novels You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Something New Under the Sun. In fact, it’s as though someone spliced the two of them together: the surreal setting and mysterious disappearances from You Too, the overtones of climate disaster from Something New, the cult elements from both. This was slightly to State of Paradise’s detriment; I just love Kleeman’s writing so much, and this doesn’t quite hit the same heights. It’s also a lighter, less complex read compared to van den Berg’s last novel, The Third Hotel.

I liked it, though – the palpable humidity of the setting, the startling suggestions about our narrator’s account of her own past. Unsurprisingly, I would firmly recommend this book to fans of Alexandra Kleeman’s fiction. I’d also compare it to other tricky, hallucinatory narratives like The Scapegoat and Looking Glass Sound, and in its last act it reminded me of nothing so much as the wild twists of The Writing Retreat.

I received an advance review copy of State of Paradise from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Samantha Martin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was…ambitious? It felt like eight ideas thrown into one, without any semblance of a clear path. Maybe that was the point, but as a reader, I failed to digest anything that will stick with me beyond the final page. Except, of course, the MC’s f*^king belly button.

[Lungstrum Smalls · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve noticed a trend of contemporary dystopian novels where the protagonist just sort of floats through the uncanny world, watching it fall apart, making wry observations, sometimes getting a weird little job or picking up a silly hobby. No one seams to care very much about anything. No one really has much energy for or big emotional reactions to what’s happening. Maybe there’s a cult or an evil corporation or a messianic religious movement, but these antagonists are never really treated seriously (you never hear about the anti trust suits against these corporations or their striking workers). It all feels… hollow. I understand this as a sort of analogue to our modern (first) world that is crumbling while we all scroll on our phones, but it’s overdone. I don’t believe that we are actually so numb and disaffected. I want more from my literature. I want characters who feel things. I love magical realism, but I want characters to actually react to what happens and I want plot that at least attempts coherence—cause and affect—even if it is supernatural. I want books that move beyond the atmospheric and actually attempt to grapple with what’s possible in our dystopian times, rather than just replicating what it feels like to dissociate.

[Jaylen]

“The novel is a pretty outdated technology, but that is exactly why we need it. The form is so archaic that it can’t be fucked with.”

I’ve read almost all of Laura van den Berg’s work. She has an irreproducible style, one that marries the uncanny with the brutally real, contained in narratives that I find to be truly hypnotizing. Her previous book “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears” is my all-time favorite story collection. Here, through a rollicking story of Florida, a pandemic, ominous virtual reality devices, ghostwriting, mental illness, and a world on the brink of collapse, “State of Paradise” is a piece of weird fiction that at its heart is an exploration of storytelling; how stories provide form to the elusive aspects of living.

I’ve been drawn to contemporary literature that explores diaristic forms, a variant of autofiction that plays with an author’s physical act of keeping a diary, exposing the author’s seemingly private dialogue with themselves. Here, van den Berg uses this structure yet interestingly (and perhaps unconventionally) leans directly into the speculative. The “reality vs. fiction” distinction tends to be at the center of novels I love, and even when this story dips hard into the fiction, Van Den Berg’s skill is in keeping the reality lurking right over your shoulder, in often horrific ways. She has done this to varying extents in her previous work, but I loved the ambition of blurring all of these lines and leaning into genre to create a new, monstrous thing, which also happens be extremely fun to read.

“The more I read, the more, and the less, I understand.”

Read if you liked / Works brought to mind: Y/N by Esther Yi, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman, The Answers by Catherine Lacey, Weather by Jenny Offill

[asapidox · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cannot be bothered to write a review.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really solid, unique blend of sci-fi and litfic, with even some horror elements. I felt like the synopsis doesn’t really do the book justice, and it does take a while for all of the plot to be introduced.

Van den Berg paints a quirky picture of an alternate post-pandemic Florida, where lots of people have become addicted to a VR-esque technology and its users have suddenly started seemingly vanishing into thin air. I’d say that is the *main* thread of the story, but there are bits of other things interspersed like information on our narrator’s past, some bizarre cultlike behavior from her mother, and her bellybutton becoming a void. I’ve never read anything quite like this before and this has me excited to read more from her!

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Illusions, Delusions, fever dreams, in a relatively shorter novel. It's so hard to describe this book, where the past becomes the present and the future all at once.
During Covid, a 3D or something like it was given to people and some got hooked and virtually disappeared into that world.

Speculative fiction, something different, strange but intriguing and well written.

[Tree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoilers ahead.

Now that I’m in my post-COVID, menopausal phase of life I have no problem admitting that sometimes not all cylinders are firing at once, if you know what I mean, and so the times while reading this book when I thought, “What the heck?” Or, “Does this make any sense at all?” could be attributed to that, but I’m not sure.

I liked the book for the most part, it is an interesting story where paranormal experiences via virtual reality and mysterious weather events are metaphors for how we deal with trauma, memory, and what is at this point in our collective existence an environmental disaster that will not be resolved or avoided. I appreciate the author’s, or at least the narrator’s, views on Florida. Referring to the Governor as a cro-magnon is in my opinion a more than fair, if possibly too kind, description of the man currently in office. The author is from Florida, and I think creating a main character with liberal views living in a very much not liberal state is relatable.

But something just doesn’t connect all the different storylines and left more questions than answers. The style of writing is a challenge at times as the author moves from one event or thought to the next, each separated by a few spaces on the page. This is more than likely how many of us think, but I don’t know whether it makes a good writing style.
In the end, it’s hard to know how things really are, for example, is The Institute open or closed? Was the main character kidnapped by the man who worked nights at the Institute or did she stalk him? I had trouble figuring out if there are parallel worlds or not because the author writes of these events that happened well before the pandemic and the start of people using the virtual reality system given out for free to people in lockdown. Does this virtual reality make people aware of their parallel lives or does it create false ones? Answers please.
I think this book would have worked better without so many competing stories. What was the point of the story of the mother’s hospitalization? Was it necessary to create a story about her starting a cult?
And ultimately for me, the part about the famous writer’s assistants was disappointing and didn’t provide enough information. It was like being in Willy Wonka’s factory but it’s run by fembots instead of oompa-loompas.

This is the first time I’ve read a book by Laura Van Den Berg and I’m not against recommending this to others or reading her other works, in fact, I’d like to, I just wish there had been a clearer, more streamlined story here.

[CJ Alberts]

Kind of wonderful!!! Reminded me of Offill a little. Vignettey novel about remaking the end of the world. Claustrophobic and bizarre and for all the Florida heads out there. No Florida bashing allowed unless you’re from Florida!!!!!!

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

State of Paradise is an unsettling and incredibly well-written foray into the darkest recesses of the mind and our current moment. Told in interconnected stories/vignettes, Laura van den Berg brilliantly blurs the lines between reality and unreality. This creates for the reader a foreboding feeling of the uncanny and the accompanying dread and grief that lurks behind each new day of our technologically dependent and increasingly dystopian world. The state of Florida, much as in Lauren Groff's famously titled story collection, is used as metaphor for humankind's aptitude for imposing ourselves onto the natural world — whether we should be here or not.

Laura van den Berg, through an unmatchable prose style and skillful storytelling, portrays the similarities between the environment, society, and the self through our collective descent into increasing chaos, confusion, and instability. All of this under late stage capitalism, mass surveillance/encroaching technology, and the increasing threat of climate change, she touches a lot of ground without it ever feeling overdone. This novel was a perfect blend of realistic, weird, and science fiction. You don't read this for the warm and fuzzies, but this has truly been one of the best new releases of 2024 and a must-read for anyone who has felt themselves living in a warped simulation post-pandemic.

Readers of Ling Ma and Jenny Offill look no further.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghosts fill this speculative auto-fiction-ish novel. It's set in that strange state that is Florida, with its bizarre politicians, its right-wingers, its swamps and humidity and insects and snakes and cats and more, set after the pandemic, or a pandemic, where those stricken, like the unnamed first-person narrator and her sister, experienced serious fevers and then other strange physical reactions. The narrator, in her late 30s, a ghost writer for a famous and rich mystery writer, and the narrator's husband, a long-distance runner and historian writing about medieval pilgrimages, came to Florida from upstate New York where he was teaching, to care for her dying father, and stayed on, living in her mother's house, when the pandemic struck. They are still there. The ghosts are plentiful - the narrator's prior selves, including the one that was committed to an institution, the ghost pal of her young niece, the pictures of those who apparently have gone missing, perhaps because of the mysterious AI device called Mind's Eye that takes you where you need to go. If that weren't enough, there's snakes galore, grasshoppers in force, a major weather event of ceaseless rain and flooding, an accidental cult created by the narrator's mother. For most of the novel, I was right there, intrigued by the narrator's voice that is cool and a bit disassociated, her observations keen about the state of the world, about the state of the novel, about the state of one's story, but when another plot point was introduced, having to do with twin sisters, and the identity of the famous mystery writer for whom the narrator is one of many ghosts, and the existence of the different realities afforded by Mind's Eye, I got tired of it and less interested as the narrator became her own secondary character in the story of her life. Still, an engaging read, often unnerving, and also sometimes funny. Really, who today hasn't been warped by, isn't now living a warped reality, caused by our own lives and collective lives, pandemic and politics and weather and technology and our minds in what is our new normal, and how do we forge on trying to create our connection to the new realities?

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the arc.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with all her previous work, Laura an den Berg writes like no other. Except maybe her husband, Paul Yoon. The fact that they are a "literary couple like no other" explains a lot, with their shared expertise and imagination. State of Paradise is set in a place she knows well having lived there, but as with another Floridian (transplanted), she focuses on the native forces that impact the human population in weird and truly original ways.

[Laura Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a creepiness that permeates Laura van den Berg's, State of Paradise. It gets under your skin and seeps into your brain so that when you look around, the world feels uneasily different. Everything is not as it seems. I couldn't put it down.

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

State of Paradise chronicles strange pandemic days, the rise of mindless electronic escape, and grief's otherworldly whims in this wholly original and epically engaging novel from a master of episodic oddity. I'll follow van den Berg wherever she wants to take me, even Florida.

[Judy Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura van den Berg’s sixth novel, STATE OF PARADISE, is a fascinating blend of speculative fiction and autofiction, set in the uniquely strange and entertaining backdrop of Florida.

About...

The protagonist, a 36-year-old ghostwriter, and her husband, also a writer, embark on a journey back to her roots in central Florida. They return to her mother’s house, which holds memories of her childhood after her father's death.

The sister lives next door, and a tech company has distributed a virtual reality device called Mind’s Eye to locals to help them meditate.

The novel delves into Florida’s erratic weather, dystopian politics, and intrusive technology, painting a vivid and thought-provoking picture of the state’s peculiarities and challenges.

Then, through meanderings in and out of reality, there is bad weather (this is Florida), and she calls up memories of her deceased father and her time as a patient in a mental facility. These memories are accompanied by strange, inexplicable body changes, adding a layer of mystery to the narrative.

Everything is not as it seems...

From a pandemic, trauma, mental illness, loss, grief, loss, and memories—from speculative and autofiction to mystery and thriller.

My thoughts...

The storytelling is MIND-BENDING!

With all the interviews I have read about this book, Van den Berg’s STATE OF PARADISE seems to be personal and intimate. Many of the events she experienced when staying at her family home during the pandemic are chronicled in her Florida Diary. This diary, which she initially intended as a personal reflection and mediation, turned into the basis for STATE OF PARADISE.

STATE OF PARADISE is deep, twisty, witty, mysterious, eccentric, weird, atmospheric, and thought-provoking. It is a story far stranger than either reality or fiction. STATE OF PARADISE resonates deeper as a metaphorical examination of post-pandemic existence.

As a Floridian for over 20 years— we all know how weird and crazy this state is. I had to laugh at the dark stories of sinkholes, swamps, floods, iguanas, alligators, snakes, hurricanes, missing people, supernatural, portals, canals, ghosts, humans, nature, bomb shelters, cults, climate, canals, bacteria, humidity, the crazy weather, politics, technology, memories, pandemic, and all the wildness and weirdness of this state.

Audiobook...

I listened to the audiobook by a favorite narrator, Megan Tusing. Fabulously talented, she delivered an outstanding performance as she brought the setting and the characters to life!

Thanks to Spotify Audiobooks and NetGalley for an advanced listening copy for an honest opinion.

blog review posted @
JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 4 Stars
Pub Date: July 9, 2024
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On a personal note...

I have lived and worked from north Ponte Vedra Beach, Ormond Peach, Palm Beach, W Palm Beach, Ft Lauderdale, Miami, to the furthest south, the Florida Keys (east coast). I have also had offices in Tampa, Sarasota, and Naples along the Gulf Coast, so I enjoyed all the landmarks and familiar spots. I loved the wink to Palm Beach and, of course, the favorite quaint town of Mount Dora (bomb shelter).

I have been trying to leave Florida for years (was relocated here from Atlanta for a job years ago). I am currently on a five-year waiting list for a senior living to relocate to Asheville, NC to retire (my home state). I am ready to return closer to family, to seasons and mountains—(minus no pesky iguanas, alligators, hurricanes, or hot, humid weather.) This state will surely be under water or dissolved soon.

The novel is very realistic and insightful in many ways, and if you are a resident, you will appreciate both the humor and the insanity.

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

I admire writers that can blend everything they want to say into a single fluent narrative. In 'State of Paradise' Laura van den Berg certainly explores an extremely wide range of ideas (addiction, the role of technology in our lives, storytelling, ghostwriting, sectarianism, time travel, to name just a few), but they don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent whole.

And in a way that doesn't really matter, because - this being a Covid-novel too - yet another idea is that our reality is changing and we are no longer able to make sense of it. And what better setting for such a tale than the surreal state of Florida.

I struggled to make sense of it, but once I chose to go with the flow I ended up finding it quite enjoyable and interesting.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another stellar novel from Laura van den Berg and one in which the jacket copy fails to do it justice.

It's a post covid Florida, in which the goverment took advantage of everyone while they were isolating and got them hooked on a new meditative, immersive technology called MIND'S EYE, and where people are suffering strange side effects that are believed to have been caused by the crazy high fevers they survived. Our narrator herself discovers that her outie is becoming a cavernous innie and her sister's eyes have completely changed color.

As she deals with these subtle physical changes, and ignores her mom's strange antics, and puts off urgent requests from the assistants of the author she ghosts for, MIND'S EYE users all around town begin mysteriously disappearing, as though into thin air... her sister being one of them. Some of the missing begin reappearing days later, a little dazed, not much worse for the wear, but with strange stories of where they've been. And our narrator's sister is one of the ones who've returned. She swears she entered another reality at their dead father's bidding and she's determined to return, with or without our narrator.

This book was just so deliciously weird. It's a fabulous mashup of grief fiction, sci-fi post-pandy fiction. Much like Florida and the pandemic itself, State of Paradise is a humid and feverish thing and oh gosh I was sooo there for it!

[Carol Blunier · Rating 1 out of 5]

If your idea of a good read is a book that makes you feel like you’re hallucinating as it decries the destruction of the planet and people’s unwillingness to turn to a politically liberal viewpoint on all matters, this is the book for you. As I prefer a book with an actual plot and character development, it was not for me.

[AndiReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

A whirlwind, a rollercoaster, a crazy train and maze of mirrors.

The ghostwriter is our protagonist, and she has returned to Florida with her husband post Covid to assist her mother. Her father has recently died, her sister lives next door and her husband is struggling as he continues to try to complete a book on Pilgrims. Van Den Berg punctures each paragraph with insights that are hard to argue yet sometimes also hard to swallow.

The Ghostwriter is stuck, she hasn't moved on from her stint in a mental institution after high school, and she never made peace with her family. She is now in her childhood home writing ridiculous thrillers for famous named-authors. When a storm hits and her sister goes missing, the world is truly put on it's end and we are all forced to deal with what is actually happening in the world today.

It's a carefully wrought crazy burst of sanity, this is the ride you need to take - Read States of Paradise!
#fararstruss&giroux #lauravandenberg #stateofparadise

[Holden Wunders]

DNF at 25%. I was SO excited for this and there’s some great writing in here but the plot feels nonexistent. I so badly want an awesome grounded science fiction book as it’s my favourite genre but today is not that day.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A woman and her husband arrive at her mother’s house in Florida to attend to her father during his last days. After his death a pandemic arises, and they decide to stay. She is a ghostwriter for a famous author of thrillers, and her husband is writing non-fiction about medieval pilgrimages. Her sister lives next door. Strange events begin to occur. People disappear, weird weather arrives, and ghosts are sighted. Her mother seems to be involved in a cult.

It is difficult to describe this surrealist novel. Virtual reality headsets are handed out and appear to be addictive. The woman’s sister says that she has experienced another dimension. The woman’s navel starts changing shapes such that she can store objects in it. As I read through this book, I had no idea what bizarre occurrence would take place next. It is reasonably entertaining, and I don’t regret reading it, but it’s a bit too far “out there” for me.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read Laura van den Berg before and I am still collecting my thoughts for State of Paradise. This is a very short book coming in at just over 200 pages, and though it was about the same main character throughout (a ghostwriter whom we never learn the name of) it almost felt like short stories. The story's structure is also interesting with it being broken into 3 time periods: May 15 - July 1, July 1-14, and July 15 - x. Clearly a continuous storyline, but it was like we got a look into various aspects of this woman's life. I got lost in the Florida setting, and I am sure some (many? 😂) things went right over my head.

I'm sure another reason I enjoyed State of Paradise was due to listening to the audiobook, and I loved Megan Tusing as the narrator. I could have listened to her and this unusual storyline all day, so it was sad that it was so short. This was an eclectic mix of sci-fi and literary fiction, with a heavy focus on the lit fiction aspect. I think it would make a great book club selection as well, and I almost wish I had done a buddy read to unpack some of what happens in the book for a better understanding of what I actually read.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

No! This was not good. The entire book description happens in the last 10% of the book, and the rest was platitudes. It's like talking to a surfer bro who just started therapy - but worse, someone with an English MFA who hasn't been to therapy or Florida. 2 stars only bc it had a cool premise.

[Ania · Rating 3 out of 5]

nie koniecznie jest to coś dla mnie, ale klimat tej książki jest niesamowity

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gotta be the weirdest damn book I've ever read — and that's saying a lot! No real plot that I could discern; certainly no resolution if there was one…and that whole thing with the belly button was just WAY too creepy, (worst line in the whole book, especially in context: "this Chapstick is just the right temperature"). But hey, FLORIDA…