A Quitter's Paradise

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Her short works have been published in Center for Fiction Magazine, Fence, GQ, The Rumpus, and others. Eleanor is prone to avoiding her feelings and often goes to great lengths to make herself small and invisible — a “skill” she cultivated as a child growing up in a household that was often devoid of warmth and tenderness. Eleanor was the most interesting character in all of this, as the background noise of her family’s immigration only makes what is happening to her—and the family—as a whole even sadder. This pattern of lying and hiding started when she was a teenager, telling her parents she won second place in a science fair when in reality the judges were unimpressed with her entry.

She is seeing another PhD candidate in the program on and off, Samir, despite being married to her husband. Overall, I did enjoy this one, even though I felt parts of the story were uneven and the characters could’ve been better developed. I was more interested in the POV of Eleanor Liu, the main character who hides lots of secrets and has a troubled relationship with her mother even after her passing, and I wish we had the chance to follow her a bit more into her present and her future choices (will she stay with her husband?Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review! The story switches and jumps rather abruptly back and forth between timeline ; the present, Eleanor's childhood and her parents' migration. The narrative switches between three time periods were sometimes rather difficult to follow, partly due to the Chinese names which were unfamiliar to me.

He may not find the precise answer, but his quest for it, in Go’s elegant and incisive prose, is perpetually captivating. Their relationship seems to have been mildly strained in the beginning, but it becomes increasingly obvious to me that Eleanor is struggling with the impacts of her mother’s death, leading to some of the decision she makes throughout the novel. As grief isn't relentless, its fragments are scattered throughout the story, reminding ones the several facets of this sentiment. I kept hoping and expecting that the novel would show Eleanor going to therapy and follow her on a journey of healing (I was remembering the excellent novel I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb) but that never happens. Eleanor, however, is comfortable and thinks to herself, “Yes, I have had to face the fact that I quit.Or do we love by trying, by shaping and forming, conforming, and reforming, failing and trying again? The writing itself was quite good though, so I would definitely be interested in reading more from Elysha Chang in the future. The book alternates between this present timeline and a past timeline focused on Eleanor's parents and her childhood. Eleanor’s narration alternates with flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence—notably her relationship with her troubled older sister—and of her parents’ emigration from Taipei in the late 1970s. A funny and endearing story made up of vivid characters, A Quitters Paradise tackles grief and complicated family dynamics.

I also didn’t know what to make of her relationship with Ellis, who featured prominently in the present timeline, but yet as a character, was not developed much — it felt like he could’ve easily been cut out of the story and it wouldn’t have made much difference. Narisa was a wild child who mostly did as she pleased, even if it meant hurting others in the process (especially Eleanor, whom she bullied and ridiculed relentlessly). Likewise some of the secrets the family kept close were culturally different perhaps from the secrets more common in Western literature, but all of this is why it is so good to read well-written novels by people from cultures not our own. With multiple POVs, I also felt detached to the characters and I had expected some characters to be deepened. The narrative alternates between a past and present timeline, with the present one told from Eleanor’s first person perspective, covering her adult life where she and her husband Ellis are both scientists working on their PhDs.In this story, Eleanor is trying to figure out her life with all the trappings (customs/traditions) in the United States. A graduate of Columbia ’ s MFA Program, she has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction and Kundiman.