Paradise [Hardcover]

Paradise is one of those books I wanted to enjoy more than I did. Stylistically, it's simply fantastic-the language, the poetic phrasing, the original descriptions and metaphors, the structure and its allusions to the stations of the cross are all evidence of a prose stylist at the top of her craft. Much of the writing is simply gorgeous. But unfortunately it all felt to little purpose to me. The whole was less than the sum of its parts.
One expects a bit of distance from a book whose main character and narrator is a drunk. There's the inherent distance of not really understanding what that entails (beyond the stock cliches which Kennedy does a fine job of avoiding), the distance of willful repulsion ("who would or could live like that?"), and the narrative distance of having a story communicated by someone who slips in and out of time and who is often attempting (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to anesthetize herself.
But there was more than that operating here and though I can't put my finger on just why, I never felt really pulled in by Hannah's story, never compelled by either the sorrows of her life (the fall from middle-class grace, the on-and-off love affair with a fellow drunk, the on-and-off affair with gainful employment or detoxification, etc.) or its accordant joys (the drink obviously, the aforementioned love affair, the recognition that her family still somehow loves her). More and more I found myself appreciating not what I was reading but how it was being communicated.
The book never really took off for me and then noticeably slowed past the two-thirds point. It seemed over long by then and somewhat repetitive, even if that repetitiveness was part of the point. And since we usually know how these things go, there wasn't much suspense or much to compel interest with regard to the two major storylines--her affair with a Robert, a drunken dentist with issues beyond the drinking-- and the various attempts at detox. The stations of the cross references were interesting in a literary fashion (though a bit too blunt at times), but again, never seemed to add much to the story beyond that and so felt more crafted, more artificial, than part of the natural story.
In the end, it's impossible not to appreciate Kennedy's talent, but I found it nearly as impossible to care much for its use here. If I were to recommend a moving book about a few drunks, I'd much more highly recommend Ironweed by William Kennedy, who also displayed a flair for language but wove for me a much more human story from it.

I've enjoyed some of the books in the "Customers who also bought this book" list, so I picked this one up. The back of the book touts the amazing prose and supreme literary talents of the author. I read about 1/3 of it and I couldn't appreciate any of this terrific prose because the action seemed to be going absolutely nowhere at all. I had a series of disjoined snapshots of an alcoholic's life, all of which were just sad and confusing as a whole. I couldn't see where this was all going, and I wasn't compelled to keep turning the pages.

This book may be technically amazing, and you could admire each sentence on a stand-alone basis, but fantastic literary devices do not a good story make. There wasn't enough cohesive action for me to want to stick with Hannah and her story. I'm sorry I don't have more information to offer, but no one else has reviewed this book yet, so I wanted to get some comments out there.

As for the "funny" parts, I didn't find any of those in the 180 pages I read.

This is a remarkable novel. Kennedy is a superb stylist--each sentence gives me a pang that I didn't write it myself--and the narrator is funny and endearing and maddening even as the story she's telling gets bleaker and bleaker. I really, really liked this book. (I liked Augusten Burroughs' "Dry" too; that's a great story, well-told, though he's not on this level as a stylist; but this, though it's fiction rather than memoir, is ultimately a more realistic and painful picture of life as an alcoholic. Not to knock Burroughs. Read that too! But this novel's amazing in a completely different way.)

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