New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2014]
360 p. ; 22 cm.
This debut novel received a lot of praise and I think it is well deserved. So often I'll read a young adult novel where the characters are on witty overdrive, or hyped-up cynicism - but not Chelsey Philpot's Paradise. The Booklist reviewer notes that there is "nothing...we haven't seen before" - and notes that Philpot knows this too, and so offers a graceful pleasure of a read as she probes the intensities of love - in friendship, in family, and in romance.
The novel revels in the private boarding school setting, the old-money wealthy setting of the Buchanan's vacation estate on Nantucket. She also conveys the way that this wealth and Buchanan's sense of having an elite place in the world wows the narrator who - from a working class family - is attending the boarding school and becomes a part of the Buchanan "family" due to fortunate happenstance.
I was pleased that Philpot did not over use the upper class - lower class differences to create false drama, but instead leaves it to the main character to figure out what can work, and what can not as she finds herself more and more involved and more and more in love with the "great Buchanans."
I'd definitely recommend this to a student who likes well written relationship novels.
No comments:
Post a Comment