Miranda Cowley Heller: The Paper Palace, 9780241470725, C format Paperback, Viking (Penguin Random House UK)

“The Paper Palace” broke the spell for me in being bored by many novels I started this year, they felt like a rehash of topics I had read before.  Cowley Heller’s debut, which is hard to believe, was just the book I had been waiting for this summer. What made me love this book is her exquisite, warm, fluid writing, her description of nature, swimming, family dynamics,  the distinct voice of the main protagonist Elle Bishop and a great story.

Elle Bishop is spending her summer with her family in the “The Paper Palace”, a slightly decaying set of cabins in the back woods of Cape Cod which has been in her family’s possession as long as she can remember and where she has spent almost all her childhood and adult summers.

But this year the past is catching up with her, something irreversible has happened during last night’s annual summer party which is how the novel opens.  

Meandering through nearly 50 years of Elle’s life, the puzzles is put together as she remembers her childhood and tumultuous family history, her unconditional love to Jonas her childhood friend, her happy marriage to Peter and own children,  her formidable mother Wallace and husbands until a dreadful incident nearly destroyed Elle's life years ago casting a shadow to the present.  No more details, it would spoil it all, this basic story line doesn’t really do the book justice...  

Publishing July 8^th in the US by Riverhead and in the UK by Viking, I guarantee you great summer page turner. Nick Hornby, Meg Worlitzer, William Boyd and Claire Fuller give it full thumbs up.  So do I, loved every 400 pages of it and had to reread the ending twice…