**Trigger and Spoiler Warning**
Do you like to read about dysfunctional mother/daughter relationships?
How about childhood sexual abuse and rape?
Parental neglect?
Uncomfortable visits to the gynocologist?
Spousal cheating and lying by the bucketload?
Death by cancer?
Ruthlessly rude and disrespectful teenagers?
Marriage breakdowns?
Drowning? Not just once, but twice?
Lazy unresolved endings?
How about 500 unnecessary references to urination – both public and private?
Then BOY do I have the book for you!
The Paper Palace tells the story of Elle and opens with her cheating on her husband by having sneaky sex with her childhood best friend while her husband is inside the titular Paper Palace, a family cabin located in the backwoods of Cape Cod. The story then unfolds over the 24 hours following this sordid event, but is mixed in with a liberal helping of flashbacks to Elle’s childhood, to explain how and why the present day story is unfolding. There are not enough trigger warnings in the world for this story and I urge extreme caution with the subject matter. It is not a light hearted nostalgic romp, nor a beach read. It’s hard work – too hard, in my opinion.
But, really, I need to go back to all the wee described in this book. Just buckets of wee. Rivers of wee. I’ve never read a book that goes to such pains to explain the process – at every opportunity – of one emptying one’s bladder. I’ve thought about it a lot. I mean, it had to have been a conscious choice of the author to time and again make the characters’ urination part of the narrative, right? There’s weeing on the street. Weeing in the sand dunes. Weeing in the lake. Weeing a VAST array of toilets. IT’S SO WEIRD. Why? Why? WHY? I wish I knew. It’s driving me mad. To the point where, if someone were to ask me ‘If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would you choose’, I’d seriously consider saying ‘Miranda Cowley Heller’ just so I could get to the bottom of WHY!?
Ok, I think that’s enough words on this book. I do not recommend it.
1 puddle of wee in the sand out of 5.
