Paradise (review)

When sixteen-year-old Billie Paradise gets the news that her grandmother has died and bequeathed Billie the family home, she knows it means trouble: her disturbed and erratic mother left the small Cornish town when she was a teenager pregnant with Billie, and has largely refused to speak about her parents—and Billie’s father—since then. When Billie, her mother, and little brother abruptly leave London for Cornwall, Billie wonders if she might find out more about the family she never knew, and once in Cornwall, she starts hunting for information. She also finds handsome and caring Danny, with whom she immediately connects, in an emotional lift she desperately needs as her mother spirals further down and as family secrets begin to surface. This is actually the story of three generations, as Nadin interweaves Billie’s narration with third-person, italicized accounts of key moments in the lives of Billie’s mother and Billie’s grandmother to tell the hidden stories that Billie is just discovering. The writing effectively balances Billie’s often quick and fragmented thoughts with longer, more detailed observations, resulting in smooth, rhythmic storytelling. There’s a bit of an overload on secrets, but the book brings taut writing together with considerable sympathy for its characters: Billie’s grandmother, trapped in a loveless and controlling marriage, is particularly poignant, and Billie’s anxious negotiation of being the new girl in a tightly knit small town is capably depicted. Ultimately, the soap-opera story rises above the melodrama, and readers with family histories of dull stability will wish for a little bit of Billie’s intrigue in their own lives.