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    Paradise City
    Paradise City
    Paradise City
    Audiobook10 hours

    Paradise City

    Written by Elizabeth Day

    Narrated by Melissa Woodbridge

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An audacious, compassionate state-of-the-nation novel about four strangers whose lives collide with far-reaching consequences.

    Beatrice Kizza, a woman in flight from a homeland that condemned her for daring to love, flees to London. There, she shields her sorrow from the indifference of her adopted city, and navigates a night-time world of shift-work and bedsits.

    Howard Pink is a self-made millionaire who has risen from Petticoat Lane to the mansions of Kensington on a tide of determination and bluster. Yet self-doubt still snaps at his heels and his life is shadowed by the terrible loss that has shaken him to his foundations.

    Carol Hetherington, recently widowed, is living the quiet life in Wandsworth with her cat and The Jeremy Kyle Show for company. As she tries to come to terms with the absence her husband has left on the other side of the bed, she frets over her daughter's prospects and wonders if she'll ever be happy again.

    Esme Reade is a young journalist learning to muck-rake and doorstep in pursuit of the elusive scoop, even as she longs to find some greater meaning and leave her imprint on the world.

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateMar 21, 2019
    ISBN9780008339883
    Paradise City
    Author

    Elizabeth Day

    Elizabeth Day is an award-winning author and broadcaster based in the UK. Her chart-topping podcast, How to Fail, is a celebration of the things that haven’t gone right. Guests have included Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Gloria Steinem, Andrew Scott, Lily Allen, Mabel, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Malcolm Gladwell. It won the Rising Star Award at the 2019 British Podcast Awards. Elizabeth is the author of the novel The Party, which was published in the US in 2017.

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    Reviews for Paradise City

    4/5

    39 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The one thing I hate about waiting for a while to write a review about a book is that my impression of the novel changes. When I first read this novel, I was blown away. I thought it was fantastic and unique and I only had good things to say about it. In hindsight, I still maintain that it was a good novel. But it wasn't spectacular. At first, the weaving of the different characters and stories is interesting. But when you reread the story or reflect on them again, they don't seem all that great. It's still done very nicely, and you can definitely see how one's life can affect so many others' without ever realizing it... but it's not some crazy interaction that blows your mind away. All in all, it's a good realistic fiction and the author does a good job in creating unique personalities for the 4 main characters and intertwining their lives.
    • 4/5
      Four very diverse individuals who live in London become linked in unexpected ways.This book light reading, but very engrossing. The characters and situations seemed very true to life, in fact I thought I could detect some aspects of real individuals put together into a composite. Particularly apposite as two of the characters in the book are caught up in a sexual harassment situation - and these are at the forefront of the news at the moment. Think Harvey Weinstein and Domenique Strass-Khan. Having said that, the book was not sleazy or prurient, and very upbeat. I enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      Rotating through four different perspectives and initially apparently four completely different stories, this novel concerns the unexplained disappearance 11 years ago of a university student, Ada Pink. Ada is the daughter of the first protagonist, Sir Howard Pink, a self-made millionaire who sexually assaults the second protagonist, Beatrice. Beatrice is a refugee from Uganda, who has been persecuted for being a lesbian and is working as a chambermaid. The third protagonist, Esme, is a news reporter who interviews Sir Howard. Finally there is the recently widowed Carol, who for a long time seems entirely unconnected, but is later drawn into the story.I enjoyed the writing, although there was a certain lack of focus and I thought the narratives could have been better entwined. Esme's relationship with her mother was very well done, but wasn't part of anything else and the romance she seemed to have found at the end of the book was more of an odd distraction than anything else - couldn't she have ended up with Sanjay?Carol's character was the one I warmed to most, although the idea that she would be open to the relationship described for her at the end was startling to me, especially given what we know about her love interest. I fear for her future.
    • 4/5
      As is obvious from the title, this is a very positive and optimistic picture of London. Usually, I prefer such novels to be a touch more dystopian but, by the end of this very readable novel, I found myself admiring Elizabeth Day's generosity towards her characters. In examining the city through the interlocking stories of four very different characters, this novel most resembles John Lanchester's Capital. However, Day doesn't have Lanchester's overt political viewpoint.
      At first, it looks as if she might be falling into the trap of creating topical stereotypes, in particular, using a Dominique Strauss-Khan type sexual assault incident in a luxury hotel room. However, both the African maid and the self-made millionaire gradually become far more complex and sympathetic. My only grouse is that some of the tie-ups at the end of the book are too neat and stretch credulity.