Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Dec 2015
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Four strangers, each inhabitants of the same city, where the gulf between those who have too much and those who will never have enough is impossibly vast. But when the glass that separates Howard's and Beatrice's worlds is shattered by an inexcusable act, they discover that the capital has connected them in ways they could never have imagined.
Four disparate characters find themselves linked together in Paradise City. Howard Pink is a wildly successful businessman still struggling to cope fifteen years after his nineteen-year-old daughter disappeared. Beatrice Kizza fled persecution from Uganda where homosexuality is illegal. She now works as a maid at a hotel Howard frequents. Esme Reade, an ambitious staff reporter on a Sunday tabloid, is desperate to get the Howard Pink interview for which all London reporters froth at the mouths. Carol Hetherington, a widow who has time to keep an eye on her neighbors' actions, makes an astonishing discovery.
Paradise City explores what a city means to those who come seeking their fortune or a better life. It is also a story of absence and loss, of how we shape ourselves around the spaces that people leave behind.
"Despite a sugary, overly tidy ending, this is unusual, well-crafted storytelling enhanced by some telling emotional notes." - Kirkus
"Through standout prose, including some brilliant imagery, [Day] uses her characters and situations to describe a London that reveals 'all its grubby glamor, all its twisted secrets and oozing promise of possibility.'" - Publishers Weekly
"Highly convincing." - The Independent (UK)
"Confident ... Day reveals a riveting panorama of London now. She has a journalist's eye for detail as well as an eminently sensible wit ... As a state-of-the-city novel, it's richer than John Lancaster's Capital and less pleased with itself than Ian McEwan's Saturday." - Evening Standard (UK)
"Ambitious ... Day's protagonists are rounded and believable, and the big city - in all its maddening, bustling glory - is the unofficial fifth character." - Glamour (UK)
"A seriously good book - intelligent, thought-provoking, funny and tender, it should be a smash this summer." - Sunday Mirror (UK)
"Elegant, sprightly prose ... [Paradise City] signals the emergence of a literary novelist whose optimism and generosity should gain her a much bigger audience." - Sunday Telegraph (UK)
"Day has demonstrable empathy for the outsider in all of us ... [yet] a sharp satirical eye." - Daily Mail (UK)
"An elegant, clever story... an addictive page-turner." - The Observer (UK)
"Richly written." - The Spectator (UK)
"A striking portrait of lives in contemporary London." - Harper's Bazaar (UK)
This information about Paradise City was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elizabeth Day is an award-winning British journalist who has worked for the Evening Standard, the Sunday Telegraph, and the Mail on Sunday, and is now a feature writer for the Observer. Her first novel, Scissors, Paper, Stone, was published in the UK and won a Betty Trask Award. Her second novel, Home Fires, marked her U.S. debut. Day grew up in Northern Ireland, and currently lives in London. Visit her website at www.elizabethdayonline.co.uk.
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