State of Paradise

"A brilliant ghost story and a profoundly moving and atmospheric meditation on place, memory, and the very nature of reality, where everything is truly not as it seems." --Mona Awad, author of Rouge

"A wholly original and epically engaging novel from a master of episodic oddity." --Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch

A heart-racing fun house of uncanniness hidden in Florida's underbelly from the celebrated Laura van den Berg

Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND'S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it's not just the ominous cats, her mother's burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern--something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.

During a violent rainstorm, the writer's sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother's lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.

A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling, Laura van den Berg's State of Paradise is an interlocking and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, she reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 07/09/2024
Pages: 224
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 8.25h x 5.38w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780374612207


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/15/2024
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2024
Booklist 06/01/2024 pg. 34

About the Author
Laura van den Berg is the author of three story collections, including I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, which was named one the ten best fiction books of 2020 by Time, and the novels Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Bard Fiction Prize, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and she is a two-time finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Born and raised in Florida, she splits her time between the Boston area and Central Florida.