A young woman is holidaying with her much older, much wealthier boyfriend and his similarly rich friends. Coming from a poor background, she has trouble fitting in though she tries - but does she really want to?
I wasn’t that taken with Edna O’Brien’s Paradise. The story itself is kinda slow and dull - the main character learns to swim (a metaphor for learning to fit into the expected mould of this rich life - how exciting...), attends numerous dreary meals and O’Brien generally shows the lives of the super wealthy to be vapid and empty. Maybe they are but I suspect they’re no more so than most people’s, regardless of wealth.
The seaside setting of boats and idyllic countryside comfort is extremely blah and nowt much happens until the end. The message of the importance of being your own person, as well as the condescending attempts of the rich to help the poor in their misguided, clumsy way, were hardly revelatory.
The occasional scene unexpectedly jolted me out of the mundane malaise of the story and O’Brien can write some interesting sentences. Still, I wouldn’t say Paradise was anything special.
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