A Quitters Paradise, Elysha Chang
A Quitters Paradise, Elysha Chang
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A Quitter's Paradise

Author: Elysha Chang

Narrator: Angela Lin

Unabridged: 7 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/06/2023


Synopsis

In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own.

Eleanor is doing just fine. Yes, she’s hiding things from her husband. Sure, she quit her PhD program and is now conducting unauthorized research on illegitimately procured mice. And, true, her mother is dead, and Eleanor has yet to go through her things. But what else is she supposed to do? What shape can grief take when you didn’t understand the person you’ve lost?

Resisting at every turn, Eleanor tumbles blindly down a path that will force her to confront her present. After a series of incidents—and some questionable choices—it becomes clear that no matter how hard Eleanor tries, she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts. But will she be brave enough to withstand the reckoning she’s hurtling toward?

At once disarmingly provocative and compulsively readable, A Quitter’s Paradise interweaves Eleanor’s story with her parents’ in an unexpectedly funny study of the beauty and contradictions of family bonds and self-knowledge, exploring the ways we unwittingly guard the secrets of our loved ones, even from ourselves.

About The Author

Elysha Chang is a writer and educator based in Brooklyn, and has taught creative writing at Blue Stoop Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, and Villanova University. A graduate of Columbia’s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction and Kundiman. Her short works have been published in Center for Fiction Magazine, Fence, GQ, The Rumpus, and others. A Quitter’s Paradise is her first novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sarah Jessica on August 03, 2023

I’m excited and honored to publish A Quitter’s Paradise, the debut novel by standout literary talent Elysha Chang. A Quitter’s Paradise is a glorious, pondering, heartbreaking, extremely funny, very special book. In Eleanor and her family, Elysha Chang has created captivating characters, who continu......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on July 02, 2023

Hate to say it but I can see why this book has such a low average rating on Goodreads. On one hand, I can see the merits of A Quitter’s Paradise’s concept: a Chinese American woman struggling to cope with the grief over her mother’s recent death as well as estrangement from her other family members.......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on February 11, 2023

This never fully gelled for me, I liked the different pieces of it, but I never felt that I had a clear idea of what the book was about or even who Eleanor was as a person. She was so stuck in hiding who she was that she never came alive.......more

Goodreads review by Kirsten on June 26, 2023

Paradise? More like paralysis. I felt extremely frustrated while reading this book. Eleanor, the main character, avoids doing anything that is in any way uncomfortable. She drops out of her graduate school program but tells her mother she’s still in it. She dates and then marries Ellis, and hides th......more

Goodreads review by Dakota on April 23, 2023

4.5/5 - The death of Eleanor’s mother has her questioning everything—her childhood, her marriage, her career. The reader watches Eleanor self destruct and avoid her feelings until her reckless behavior catches up to her. A funny and endearing story made up of vivid characters, A Quitters Paradise ta......more