A Quitter's Paradise

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Overall, the chaos was entertaining to read however I do feel the book fell short of discussing a very real concept of finding peace and paradise after leaving behind something that does not serve you and where you do not feel adequately understood or supported. Their relationship seems to have been mildly strained in the beginning, but it becomes increasingly obvious to me that Eleanor is struggling with the impacts of her mother’s death, leading to some of the decision she makes throughout the novel. Eleanor Liu is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants who secretly married her boyfriend of eight months. The writing in this one is fairly accessible; I finished the book over the course of two days while I was in vacation in California. Overall, I did enjoy this one, even though I felt parts of the story were uneven and the characters could’ve been better developed.

The book alternates between this present timeline and a past timeline focused on Eleanor's parents and her childhood. I struggled to really get invested in this debut that explores the complicated mother-daughter relationship between an Asian American immigrant and her daughter and the grief that comes when she dies unexpectedly. I had serious mixed feelings toward this book, with regard to both the story arc and the characters. The reader watches Eleanor self destruct and avoid her feelings until her reckless behavior catches up to her.

Author Mallery has created a delightful story of friendship between three women that also offers a variety of love stories as they fall in love, make mistakes, and figure out how to be the best—albeit still flawed—versions of themselves.

In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own. It’s understandable that a teen would lie to gain her parents approval but why is Eleanor behaving the same way at 25 years old? On the one hand, I definitely resonated with Eleanor as a child, growing up in an immigrant household and the struggles that came with it, as well as the tenuous relationship with her mother that shaped who she became as an adult — much of it was familiar to me, as I had experienced similar struggles in my own life. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. I personally struggle with litfic that isn’t really plot driven — although I did love the writing style and flow of the book through different perspectives.Women make choices to get themselves ahead by forging practical relationships and marrying, only to slowly be out manuevered and forced into a corner to forfeit their own work, motivations. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review! In the months following her mother’s death, Eleanor makes increasingly risky and bizarre choices, such as spending unsanctioned time with a primate from the lab, before decamping for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she goes through Rita’s belongings and begins to grasp a greater sense of her life. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). In 2013 New York City, Eleanor Liu is on track to fulfill her late mother Rita’s low expectations, having dropped out of a neuroscience graduate program to work in her classmate-turned-husband’s lab.

It was an efficient way to employ a dual timeline with clarity, even when switching back and forth between Eleanor past and present. This book is still in a different vein, though, as it is primarily about grief and trying to overcome the obstacles of immigration and attempting to find the American Dream for one Taiwanese family. It is this personality trait of Eleanor’s that shapes much of the story in the present timeline, which ends up affecting her relationships with everyone around her. A graduate of Columbia ’ s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman. There's a sense of desperation in this book, to have something solely your own, when it seems like at every turn life makes a grab for something.A graduate of Columbia’s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction and Kundiman. I knew nothing about the author, Elysa Chang, or her work before picking up this novel, and I think I’d read something by her again. But, bored and unfulfilled both matrimonially and professionally, Eleanor soon has an affair with a colleague. It was confusing because the timelines would switch at random, and the back and forth jumps meant most of the character development was lost.