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By Caitlin Macy

• July 4, 2021

THE PAPER PALACE By Miranda Cowley Heller

A summer place one returns to year after year can serve as a touchstone — some things never change — as well as an object provided for scale. Like a record of children’s names and heights written on the back of a pantry door, each return prompts a reckoning: Where were we then, where are we now? Elle Bishop, the narrator of Miranda Cowley Heller’s appealing debut novel, has spent every summer of her 50-odd years in a family cabin in the backwoods of Cape Cod.

Heller interweaves two narratives — one, a single day unfolding in the present on Cape Cod; the other, selected scenes from the past, presented chronologically: “1974. May, New York,” “1979. July, Vermont.” Because it happens on the third page of the novel, it won’t spoil anything to reveal that the present-day story is driven by Elle — married with children — finally consummating her lifelong attraction to her childhood friend Jonas, with whom she grew up on the Cape.

To say, as reviewers like to, that she “gets the details right” would be to exoticize elements that feel as natural in Heller’s hands as the early-morning swim Elle takes, when the novel opens, after a tumultuous night. The Clamato juice mixers; the ancient list of crossed-out and updated telephone numbers tacked to a shelf above the landline; the “banter of WASPs around alcohol” all effortlessly create a sense of place so specific that to quote them out of context seems vulgar, like one of the many delightfully arcane breaches of etiquette Elle’s acid-tongued mother rails against.

Doubly blessed when it comes to descriptive powers, Heller is as good on nature as she is on interiors: “On the far side of the pond,” Elle tells us, “beyond the break of pine and shrub oak, the ocean is furious, roaring.” Later, she sounds almost Homeric: “Between the path and the pond is a thin windbreak of trees — flowering clethra, bay and wild blueberry bushes.”

The novel’s “past” narrative, which traces Elle’s infancy, childhood, adolescence and eventual marriage, also rings true to the reader — so true, in fact, that at times this novel starts to feel like a memoir with an infidelity plot tacked on. Moving through the years to the present day, we learn the family histories of both Elle’s father and mother; we meet and get to know her grandparents on both sides. Her parents divorce when she and her sister are little, after which lovers, stepparents and stepsiblings pile up, only a few of whom prove essential to either the plot or theme of “The Paper Palace.”

Rather than working in the service of the story, the accumulation of so many minor characters, and the highly specific detail of everything from Elle’s grandmother’s estate in Guatemala to her stepfather’s best friend’s farm in Vermont, suggest a faithful, factual recounting — whether or not they have anything to do with Heller’s real life.

I managed to hold off Googling the author, yet suspect that with her casual use of English vocabulary — “claret,” “jacket potatoes,” “windscreen” — she has spent some time in Britain. This works both for her and against her. The character of Peter, Elle’s English husband, is, along with her mother, Wallace, one of the more vivid characters in the book. With his joyfully unrepentant chain-smoking, his defense of socks with sandals and his charmingly dry, unsentimental banter, Peter was real enough to me that I could see his fair skin peeling under the American summer sky.

But when Heller abruptly moves Elle to England (“1989. February, London”), I wasn’t sure what she was doing there. Many pages elapse before Elle explains baldly — and overspecifically, as if forming an alibi — that she was “getting a postgraduate degree in French literature at Queen Mary and planned to teach.”

The best memoirs unspool a red thread that a reader follows as excitedly as any novel’s. With memoir, though, certain shortcuts are possible because we know from the outset that the narrator becomes a famous artist; a recovered alcoholic; a nun. In a memoir, one can move the narrative with a quick nod along the lines of (my own sentence, not Heller’s) “By this time, I was living in London.” We understand that this is but one stop on the way to fame; sobriety; the convent.

Novels, though, must account, at least implicitly, for plot elements such as sudden changes in setting. And while Peter’s Englishness is perfectly organic, I had trouble getting my head around his job — indeed, around all of the characters’ stated jobs. Billed as a “respected” financial journalist, Peter never checks the market or even mentions a publication or refers to a story. Granted, he is on vacation for most of the novel, and I probably would have accepted the career or simply forgotten about his source of income except that, for plot reasons, he is suddenly called away on assignment from the Cape to … Memphis? As far as I know, the second-biggest city in Tennessee is not a fulcrum of breaking financial news.

Meantime, the love of Elle’s life, green-eyed Jonas, seems to be cast as a “brilliant painter” primarily to distinguish him as a more exciting alternative to the tamer Peter. As for Elle herself, a couple of passing references to an office where she grades papers constitute the whole of her nonfamily working life as an N.Y.U. comp lit professor. Of course, a novel doesn’t require that characters’ jobs factor largely. But collectively, they are an example of the occasional lapses of attention that work against Heller’s fine writing to dilute the narrative.

And what of our narrator? Why do two extremely desirable men — the witty, wealthy Peter, who is “the kind of man who looks sexy in a suit,” and the bohemian Jonas, with “thick black hair you can grasp in your fists” — love and desire her? Her very name, Elle — short for Eleanor — Bishop, is so anodyne as to be opaque. Here again, the reliable first-person voice of memoir sometimes seems to handicap the novel rather than to help it along, as if, even though Elle holds nothing back (peeing in public, sex on the beach), she is too focused on her charming husband and outrageous mother to tell us who she is. Mainly, through the eyes of the two men, we learn that she is “gorgeous.”

Yet in the end, in a kind of meta victory, Elle is appealing as a narrator, endowed as she is with that essential characteristic of any good storyteller: the ability to describe people and things in a way we trust and enjoy. Meeting her aristocratic future mother-in-law, she notes: “We drank sherry in a large sitting room with polished hardwood floors — mahogany inlaid with fruitwood, she explained. A tasteful abstract painting hung over the marble fireplace. She’d recently taken an interest in ‘the Moderns.’ I perched on a sage-green velvet sofa and thought about Becky Sharp as I crossed and uncrossed my legs.” In moments like this, Elle finds her voice.

Caitlin Macy is the author of “Mrs.,” “Spoiled” and “The Fundamentals of Play.”

THE PAPER PALACE By Miranda Cowley Heller 386 pp. Riverhead. $27.

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

THE PAPER PALACE

by Miranda Cowley Heller ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 6, 2021

From the first pages of her debut novel, Heller pulls no punches. Some of them just sneak up on you later on.

When it comes to making the biggest decision of your life, what matters more: the events of one epic day or the events of a lifetime—though could that day have even happened without the lifetime leading up to it?

Elle Bishop has spent every summer of her 50 years at her family’s compound on Cape Cod, in the Back Woods. Ramshackle and in a constant losing battle with the elements, the beach retreat is a reassuring constant in Elle’s life, which has otherwise been marked by her parents’ divorce, a series of increasingly inappropriate parental mates, gruesome stepsiblings, and interactions with lecherous and violent men and boys. Jonas, a childhood friend of Elle’s from the Cape, served as another constant during her challenging upbringing. Elle’s day of reckoning is prompted by a sexual encounter with him—just outside a dinner party with both of their spouses in attendance—after years of a slow-burn relationship. Elle’s marriage to a man she truly loves (and the comfortable family life they've made together) is balanced against the secret-filled history she and Jonas share. Over the course of the ensuing hours, Elle narrates her day of introspection and intersperses it with flashbacks spanning the course of her whole life, with and without Jonas. The moody and atmospheric setting of the shadowy paths and ponds of the Back Woods is described in lush detail that makes a sharp contrast to the colder, sharper elements of Elle’s story. But the long-held secrets that Elle reveals and reckons with over the course of her day of decision cast the biggest shadow over her life and will inform the rest of her days.

Pub Date: July 6, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-32982-5

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: April 13, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION

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More About This Book

SEEN & HEARD

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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DEMON COPPERHEAD

by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

Inspired by David Copperfield , Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.

It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.

Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

LITERARY FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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Author Interviews

Love is a losing game and choice is a curse in 'the paper palace'.

Mary Louise Kelly

Vincent Acovino

Justine Kenin

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Miranda Cowley Heller about her first novel, The Paper Palace , which is set in late summer on Cape Cod — and is all about desire.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

A new novel set in late summer on Cape Cod is all about desire. Even the writing seems to drip with secrets and longing. Here's the author, Miranda Cowley Heller, reading from the first few pages.

MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER: (Reading) I dropped my bathrobe to the ground and stand naked at the water's edge. On the far side of the pond, beyond the break of pine and shrub oak, the ocean is furious, roaring. It must be carrying a storm in its belly from somewhere out at sea. But here at the edge of the pond, the air is honey still. I wait, watch, listen - the chirping, buzzing of tiny insects, a wind that stirs the trees too gently. Then I wade in up to my knees and dive headlong into the freezing water. I swim out into the deep, past the water lilies, pushed forward by exhilaration, freedom and an adrenaline rush of nameless panic. I have a shadow fear of snapping turtles coming up from the depths to bite my heavy breasts. Or perhaps, they'll be drawn by the smell of sex as I open and close my legs.

KELLY: Phew. That is Miranda Cowley Heller.

KELLY: Reading this, you can't help would be just drawn in by that. That is her debut novel "The Paper Palace." And as you can hear from the laugh, Miranda Cowley Heller is with us.

COWLEY HELLER: Thank you so much for having me.

KELLY: All right. I just - set the scene because I feel like you've transported me. We are on Cape Cod. Where are we? What is the Paper Palace?

COWLEY HELLER: We are on the part of Cape Cod called the Outer Cape, which is a very different landscape than, I believe, most people anticipate or picture. It's not Hyannis Port. It's a very wild and passionate landscape with huge cliffs and dunes. But there are also these beautiful ponds right near the sea. And most of the novel is set in the backwoods of the Outer Cape on the edge of this pond, where the family of the heroine Elle Bishop has had a camp on the edge of a pond that's ironically called the Paper Palace because when it was built, her grandfather who built it ran out of money. And so he built a lot of it out of Homasote, which is a kind of cardboard. So although it's a rundown camp, they refer to it as the Paper Palace.

KELLY: The Paper Palace as it gently decays in the salty air all around them - so, Elle, your heroine, your protagonist, who is - and the whole book is in her voice. It's all first person. Describe her for us. She's a mother of three. She's really happily married. But there's a big old but.

COWLEY HELLER: There's a big old but (laughter). Elle Bishop is in her early 50s. She is very happily married, has three children. And when the novel opens, she has just woken when she takes this swim and remembers what she did the night before, which was that her very best friend, whose name is Jonas - during a dinner party her mother is giving with Jonas' wife Gina present and Elle's husband Peter present. Jonas and Elle go out back and have sex, very hot sex for the first time, even though they have been best friends since childhood. Now she finds herself at this crossroads. And over the next 24 hours, she's going to have to decide whether to stay with her very beloved and wonderful, gorgeous husband Peter or the man she always dreamed of and thought she would marry if something rather terrible hadn't broken them apart in their childhood.

KELLY: And one of the central questions that propels the whole book forward is, why now? As you say, this was somebody who Elle had the hots for when she was a kid. Why have they crossed this line now?

COWLEY HELLER: Well, that's exactly the question. And, of course, I can't answer it because that would be giving away. But it is - instead of a whodunit, I think there's an emotional mystery that runs through that you are pointing out. So it's sort of a why done it, exactly. Something happens that you learn over the course of the novel toward the very end that propels them outdoors and gives her a kind of freedom she didn't have before. But because the novel is told in 24 hours but also 50 years - two parallel stories - it takes you up through the 50 years before you really find out the whys.

KELLY: Yeah. Setting aside the men, setting aside the sex, the mom is quite a character (laughter). As I read her, I really liked her. I - and at the same time was thinking, oh, God, she would drive me nuts if she were my mom. What is it about that relationship, the mother-daughter relationship, that you wanted to capture?

COWLEY HELLER: I think they - Elle - first of all, Wallace is my favorite character, probably, in the book. I absolutely love her. I love how rude and funny she is.

KELLY: I bet she was an awful lot of fun to write.

COWLEY HELLER: She was the most fun character to write by a long chalk. But I think what interests me in this is there's a bunch of women, there's generations of women in the novel. There's Wallace's mother, Nanette, who undergoes a certain trauma, as a result of which her daughter, Wallace, undergoes another kind of a trauma, which shapes who she is. Then when Elle's life turns dark, maybe if her mother hadn't gone through what she'd gone through, Elle would have been able to come to her mother and talk to her about it. These are powerful women. These are not victims at all. I think they're all - but they're all women who have had to sort of put away childish things. And they come from - each comes from such a different generation, and that really interested me as well.

KELLY: And then, of course, Elle has a daughter herself.

COWLEY HELLER: Right.

KELLY: And you wonder how each of all of these tensions swirling beneath the surface she might be absorbing and how it will shape her for your sequel in 20 years (laughter).

COWLEY HELLER: For the sequel - well, and I think without having to answer that question, it's such - it raises the question. I think our parents' love lives, our grandparents' love lives can change the course of our history. And so it's not just we inherit choices. There's a kind of, you know, a trickle-down emotional economics, if you want to call it that. We inherit choices as well as making them.

KELLY: It also seems to get it - there - you know, as we look back, as we get older and look back over our lives, you can point to certain moments where everything changed, where you had to make a call. And it's really interesting seeing a woman, your character, Elle, who has made the choice. She married the nice guy, the posh Brit. She's got three kids. Everything worked out great. And yet she's at another moment where she doesn't have forever to make this choice because she's going to wreck her marriage if she continues with Jonas...

COWLEY HELLER: Absolutely.

KELLY: She's got to decide, and she's kind of got to decide right now.

COWLEY HELLER: Yeah, she does. And I think there's an emotional truth to that that may not always be true of putting that kind of pressure. But when you love two people that passionately, there is a need to choose. She can't keep - she can't - it can't be an affair. There's no way Jonas could be an affair, and so she knows this. She knows herself.

KELLY: That is the writer Miranda Cowley Heller talking about her new novel "The Paper Palace."

Thank you very much.

COWLEY HELLER: Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF WHITNEY SONG, "FTA")

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Culture | Books

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller review: Big Little Lies meets John Cheever

Elle Bishop, the narrator of Miranda Cowley Heller’s much hyped debut novel, does not give a good first impression. When we meet her, at her family’s Cape Cod holiday home , she appears reckless and selfish, following her desires without a second thought for anyone else.

She wakes up at 6.30am, bypasses the detritus of the previous evening’s dinner party and heads out for a swim. As she enters the freezing water, naked, she plays over the night before in her head, when she “f***ed” her childhood best friend Jonas against the wall of their house while her husband and children snoozed inside and her mother did the washing up. Cowley Heller provides a detailed, lyrical description of the honeyed air, the catch of breath in Elle’s throat, her thrumming heartbeat and the sensation of the water, all of which contrasts baldly with her crude description of the sex, “he shoved himself into me”.

But as we learn more about Elle, it becomes clear that this type of behaviour - enjoying illicit sex - is a departure for her. All her adult life she has been hiding a devastating secret about a traumatic incident in her past that has haunted her since she was a teenager. The story unfolds episodically, switching between the present day and flashbacks from Elle’s family history which creates pace and a sense of intrigue – how did she end up here?

Miranda Cowley Heller comes from New York’s literary elite. In the book’s acknowledgements, she thanks her grandfather, literary critic Malcolm Cowley, for his advice that every good story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, and the end foreshadowed in the beginning (which this story succeeds in). Her father was military historian Robert Cowley, who was married to the author John Cheever’s daughter, Susan. As in Cheever’s writing, swimming is imbued with significance here – Bishop’s mother does it daily and says you never regret a swim – and the descriptions of New England also feel comparable.

Cowley Heller has a background in TV. She was Senior Vice President and Head of Drama Series at HBO, working on The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire. It is easy to see The Paper Palace as a TV show. It has strong Big Little Lies energy – rich people plagued by neuroses in enormous houses – and the short chapters end on cliffhangers.

The writing is full of rich detail, evoking the New England landscape; the overgrown reeds and pond life, the racoons outside and the mice in the ceiling, all the wild nature contrasting with the constrictions that the humans place on their lives to control their more animal sides. The book’s title is the name of the Bishops’ cabin in the woods, so called because it is lined with paperboard. There is a strong sense of place as we go from there to New York to Vermont and London, learning about Elle’s grandmother’s estate in Guatemala, her parents’ divorce and how Elle meets her English husband Peter.

Cowley Heller has fun with Peter and his Englishness and his mother, “a classic battle-axe in pearls” who has recently taken an interest in “the moderns”. Elle’s mother Wallace makes cutting observations about Peter, like: “Brits love to drink but they make tepid, vacuous cocktails.” At first, the way Wallace speaks feels contrived, in quotes of received wisdom, telling her daughter to be like a Botticelli with Peter, smiling all the time, but you get used to her style (if occasionally as annoyed by it as Elle is; she despairs at “the banter of WASPs around alcohol”).

Deep down, you sense that Wallace knew more than she let on about the traumatic incident that happened to her daughter, but repressed it because she wanted to get on with her life. The relationship between Wallace and her daughter forms a far more convincing heart of the story than that between Elle and Jonas.

The weakest point of the novel is the writing about sex, which admittedly is difficult to get right. Here it all feels a bit Mills and Boon. Jonas, Elle’s childhood friend, has “thick black hair you can grasp in your fists” and they say things to each other like “I’ve spent my whole life waiting for this”. It just doesn’t feel believable. I also wish there was less writing about Elle’s bladder. She is always bursting for a wee at the most inconvenient time. Considering she is a grown-up woman, you would think she would have learned how to handle this better.

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One other small criticism is that, as a journalist, I was somewhat confused at Peter’s credentials. He is a “respected” financial journalist but never seems to do any work and mysteriously goes to Memphis for business (not known for its finance).

That aside, if you aren’t reading as a journalist, this is an absorbing family saga packed with intrigue and complicated characters that transports you to Cape Cod. I can’t wait for the adaptation.

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller is out now, £14.99, Penguin Viking

Accessibility Links

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller review — their earthy desires

A sultry tale of waspish new england that captures the spirit of updike and cheever.

T his is a novel of sensations — some painfully sharp. In its opening pages the protagonist Elle awakes early, swerves the wreckage of a dinner party the previous evening, and goes for a swim in the freshwater pond that laps her family’s mouldering holiday encampment. “The air is honey-still. I wait, watch, listen . . . Then I wade in up to my knees and dive headlong into the freezing water . . . I have a shadow-fear of snapping turtles coming up from the depths to bite my heavy breasts.” Drying off, she revisits the moment, hours earlier, when she stepped outside from the party to have urgent sex with her oldest friend, Jonah. All within potential earshot of her posh English husband, Peter,

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The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller book review

I picked up The Paper Palace as a random pick before I went on holiday a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve been on quite a journey and thoroughly enjoyed so much of it. Not all of it was perfect but it’s a book that has definitely left a good mark on me.

Please note that this article contains affiliate links. This means if you choose to purchase a product via one of the links below, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. These affiliate links do not affect my final opinion of the products.

The Paper Palace is told over 24 hours and 50 years. It’s a book about betrayal and tough adult decisions. It’s also a book that spends so many of its pages trying to convince you something so very wrong was justified and you’ll definitely have an opinion on whether it was by the end.

The Paper Palace plot – 4/5

The Paper Palace tells the story of Elle and her affair with a childhood sweetheart. It slowly tells the tale of the 24 hours after the incident but, more importantly, and more interestingly, the life that led Elle to make this decision.

The book takes place mostly at a place in the countryside by a lake dubbed “The Paper Palace” – a building built by one of Elle’s family which, every year, they spend their summers.

If you know me, you know I love a book that spans someone’s life and I love a book that gives an honest and brutal look at life where not everything goes swimmingly and things are difficult. The Paper Palace does this – it’s a great look back at Elle’s life and some of the darker moments, how her life isn’t perfect and possibly why she made the decision she did in the modern-day.

I never felt bored at any point of the story and I was constantly wondering what was coming next with Elle’s life constantly throwing interesting curveballs and genuinely difficult moments to comprehend. Her story features loss, divorce, a broken home life as a child and then hard work and perseverance is how she got to where she is now.

The Paper Palace characters – 5/5

The Paper Palace is one of those books really absolutely defines its characters, sticks with them and makes you fall in love with them. Elle herself is a flawed, sometimes rude but predominantly good person who has made some bad choices but made many more good ones. She’s likeable in her own sense and is a good main character, with Heller giving her a troubling time to deal with some honest thoughts on life.

Elle’s husband Peter is my favourite throughout the whole book along with Elle’s mother. Peter is genuinely funny, an incredible soul and seems to be so mature – despite coming from a family of wealth meaning he could have been more arrogant and dislikeable. He’s got a fantastic relationship with Elle’s mother too which I enjoyed every time it was presented.

Elle’s mother is a harsh, opinionated and to-to-point woman of age and seems to have given up caring what people think and giving her thoughts where she can. Despite this harsh and mean exterior, Peter’s witty and intelligent banter and equally ruthless opinions mean that she adores him. She rarely admits it but the way she smiles, the way she agrees and the way she can’t help but compliment him show her real admiration for him.

Jonas is the final main character really. He is kind too and gets on well with Elle. He’s a mysterious boy and grows into a slightly quiet but interesting character. In my opinion, I prefer Peter as he’s more my sort of person but Jonas is likeable in his own way too.

The Paper Palace overall rating – 4/5

I really liked The Paper Palace . It was a close call between giving it four or five stars. The story was enjoyable throughout, the characters were a delight with a couple of exceptional highlights and it was a nice easy book to read. However, the more I think about it and compare it to my other five-star reads, there was just something slightly missing which I think may have been any sense of real twist or drama – yes there are emotional moments but nothing that fully had be gripped by the heart.

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• About the Book

A story of summer, secrets, love and lies: in the course of a singular day on Cape Cod, one woman must make a life-changing decision that has been brewing for decades.

It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” --- the family summer place that she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next 24 hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity.

Tender yet devastating, THE PAPER PALACE considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

• Publication Date: April 19, 2022
• Genres: Fiction , Women's Fiction
• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• ISBN-10: 059332983X
• ISBN-13: 9780593329832

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The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

By: Author Jen - MMB Book Blog

Posted on Published: 19 September 2022  - Last updated: 4 March 2024

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The Paper Palace is the debut novel by Miranda Cowley Heller, published in 2021 .

The book was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022 and although it lost out to Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness , it still received a lot of praise. It was also a Richard and Judy book club pick and a number 1 New York Times bestseller.

It was described as a ‘page-turning summer read’ and a ‘deeply emotional love story’ so I decided it would be the perfect read to take on holiday with me.

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller: Plot

Elle Bishop seems to have a perfect life. A husband who adores her, two children and a holiday home in Cape Cod.

This holiday home, affectionately named The Paper Palace, is the scene of Elle’s greatest betrayal. As her mother and husband chat inside, Elle enjoys a passionate encounter with her oldest friend.

Despite outward appearances, Elle’s life has been far from perfect. Devastating past experiences have led her to this point and the decision she now has to make.

The story unfolds over twenty-four hours with flashbacks over fifty years, as Elle finally has to decide what, and who, she truly wants.

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller: My Opinion

I need to start this review by stating that this was not a lighthearted beach read!

With quotes such as ‘glorious and gorgeous’ and ‘intoxicating and shimmering,’ I was, mistakenly, expecting something along the lines of Malibu Rising , which was my last year’s summer holiday book choice.

That certainly wasn’t the case! Some of the topics covered were really dark. Incest and child sexual abuse are featured within the story and I just wasn’t expecting it.

The book covers just one day in the life of Elle, but with flashbacks to the past. These flashbacks allow us to fully understand Elle and the choices she makes.

I found Elle, as a main character, pretty unlikeable and difficult to empathise with. I’m not sure she deserved either man, and I questioned why they were both so besotted with her.

However, the story itself is really well written. The poetic prose and descriptions of Cape Cod were beautiful. I could almost feel the sand between my toes.

I could easily understand the comparisons between this book and Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Both authors really bring the settings to life.

The story is an exploration of the choices we make, and the paths we choose to go down. It highlights the impact secrets and lies can have on a family and how these repercussions can be felt by those around us.

Despite my misgivings and finding Elle an irritating character, I couldn’t help but be captivated by the story which is a testament to the author’s skill.

It’s so hard to rate this book, because I didn’t dislike it. I just didn’t love it either.

Related Book Reviews

• The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
• Normal People by Sally Rooney

Related Book Lists

• Women’s Prize for Fiction Winners
• Richard and Judy Book Club List 2023

Book Review: Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace is an absorbing, if traumatic, read

• November 25, 2021
• miranda cowley heller
• Penguin Books
• the paper palace

Like many of Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club picks,  The Paper Palace by former head of drama series at HBO, Miranda Cowley Heller quickly became the book of the moment when it was released back in July.

The novel follows a woman named Elle, who has finally given into her desire for her childhood friend Jonas after decades of friendship and secrets. Both Elle and Jonas are married to other people, but their shared history (told in a series of flashbacks) holds much weight. And by the end of the novel, the reader will be wondering whether their actions are infidelity, or fate.

The reader should be warned going into this novel that it contains a lot of heavy subject matter. Cowley Heller seems to have taken Vonnegut’s edict that a writer should make their main character as miserable as possible to heart. Right from her birth, Elle is subject to medical crises, her parents unhappiness and subsequent awful new spouses, and much, much worse. I wondered at times if all of these traumatic experiences were really necessary for the book to move forward – for example, Elle’s botched operation as a baby seemed to hold very little relevance later in the book.

The Paper Palace does not feel like an overly long read, but it could perhaps have benefited from some pruning, if just to give the reader a break from all of the heaviness it contains. Midway through the book, I found myself needing to put it down, because what was happening to Elle was too dark, and I just needed to stop for a break.

The novel is structured in a series of flashbacks interspersed between scenes in the present day. The present day sections are all part of the same couple of days, in which Elle and her family, and Jonas and his wife Gina are staying on the Cape, where Elle’s family holiday home (known as The Paper Palace because of the paper-like material that it is made of) is located.

Elle’s memories of her own life, as well as the details that she remembers of her parents’ and grandparents’, are supposed to build a picture of everything that had led up to the decision she now needs to make – whether to stay with loyal husband and father, Peter, or whether to give in to a long repressed love she has felt for Jonas, which events from their shared past have prevented her from acting upon.

The flashbacks are tightly controlled and often shown as short, but effective moments in time, rather than nostalgic indulgences. The reader is moved through half a century or more of history quickly, and just as quickly, begins to build a complex portrait of an extremely unhappy family. The real strength of the novel lies in its depth of characterisation.

One thing that was irksome about the book was that at time, its language could be quite overblown, erring on the side of pretentious. These moments are rare, but when they crop up, they reminded me that I was reading about the lives and problems of quite privileged people. Speaking with a friend who had read this book, she mentioned that this felt like it harked back to the style of early-twentieth century American writers, so perhaps this will not be a problem for all readers. Personally, I felt that the whole thing had a cinematic air; given the author’s background, this is unsurprising. I could quite easily see this novel being turned into a Big Little Lies style production.

Don’t be fooled by the big yellow Reese Witherspoon logo on the cover of this book. It is not a sunshine-filled summer holiday beach read. Read it with your book club, and be prepared for the darkness within.

THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)

Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace is out now from Penguin . Grab yourself a copy from Booktopia HERE .

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Emily Paull

Emily Paull is a former bookseller, and now works as a librarian. Her debut book, Well-Behaved Women, was released by Margaret River Press in 2019.

Should I Read It? The Paper Palace, an epic romance for fans of Where The Crawdads Sing.

Content warning: This book deals with sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers.

On a glorious summer morning, Elle Bishop wakes early and leaves her husband Peter sleeping soundly in their bed. 

She walks through the property, past the debris from the party the night before, strolls down towards the pond, strips off and swims in the gentle water before the rest of her family begin to stir. 

During that early morning swim, she remembers what happened the night before. When she snuck out of the party and had sex with the man she had been in love with since they were both children. 

And thus begins a story that is told over 24 hours and 50 years. A story about love, and loss, and trauma, and making an impossible decision. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Keryn Donnelly (@keryndonnelly)

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BONUS: Out Loud's Best Books To Read This Summer

The Celebrity Cheating Story That Won’t Die

Below I unpack what The Paper Palace is about and give my verdict on whether you should read it: 

What is The Paper Palace  about?

The Paper Palace follows the story of New Yorker Elle Bishop, who was raised by eccentric, divorced parents in the 1960s and 1970s. 

After her parents divorced, a string of step-parents and step-siblings and step-grandparents came in and out of her life, causing all sorts of childhood trauma. 

The one constant in her life was her mother's family holiday home - a rundown house and collection of cabins they called  ' The Paper Palace', on the banks of a pond at Cape Cod. 

Elle's family spent every summer there, and that's where she met her best friend Jonas. 

Although they are destined to be together, a traumatic experience from Elle's childhood and a secret keeps them apart for decades. 

Until the night of the party. 

Who's the author?

The Paper Palace is Miranda Cowley Heller's debut novel. After graduating from Harvard, Cowley Heller became a book editor, before working for a decade as the Head of Drama Series at HBO. 

So, yeah, she knows how to tell a bloody good story. 

Is it a sprint, a marathon, or a hike?

A marathon. The book flips between Elle's life growing up and the day after the party, so there's a lot to take in. 

Her past is told through tiny vignettes of childhood trauma ranging from the amusing, to the almost unbelievable, to the absolutely absurd, so you almost need some time to process all of those little stories so you can take in the bigger picture.

Also, like in Where The Crawdads Sing , Cowley Heller creates a world in The Paper Palace that you'll never want to leave, so it's worth taking your time with it. 

Come for the...

The love triangle between Elle, Jonas and Peter. 

Stay for the...

The mystery of what happened to Elle when she was a teenager and how she finally comes to terms with that. 

The writing! Cowley Heller knows how to tell a damn good story so the book is full of passages that you'll want to highlight and read a second time. 

Speaking of which... 

What are some of the best quotes?

“Nice is the enemy of interesting.” 

“If I could fly backward, I would," I said. To the safety of branches, to the time when my heart raced for him like a hummingbird's, 1,200 beats per second. And he said, as he always did, "I know.” 

“But it’s what we do, what we’ve done for years now. We drag our past behind us like a weight, still shackled, but far enough back that we never have to see, never have to openly acknowledge who we once were.” 

“But this time when I pull away from him, it is agonising. Not found, but lost. I pause, stand on the precipice of memory, wanting so desperately to fall into it, knowing I can't. Jonas is animal, Peter is mineral. And I need a rock.” 

“Every single time I see the ocean, even if I’ve been there in the morning, it feels like a new miracle - its power, its blueness always just as overwhelming. Like falling in love.”

What books will it remind you of?

Where The Crawdads Sing for the setting and the epic love story that starts in childhood. 

A Little Life for the childhood trauma and how that presents later in life. 

And Great Expectations  for the eccentric characters and almost unbelievable plot points. 

How long is it?

The Paper Palace sits around the 400-page mark. 

LISTEN: Keryn Donnelly and Jessie Stephens discuss Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. Post continues below. 

How will it make you feel?

The Paper Palace will make you feel a whole rollercoaster of emotions. 

There's some genuinely funny bits that will make you giggle out loud. The plot is so intriguing, you'll be thinking about a random story from Elle's childhood while you're trying to work or cooking dinner. 

By the end of the book, you will have genuine affection for the characters and what they've been through. 

I was quite emotional towards the end of the book and couldn't wait to find out how it all panned out. 

How many stars would I give it?

I would give The Paper Palace five out of five early morning skinny dips. It's definitely found a place on my favourite books of all time list. 

My only issue with the book is that some of the stories from Elle's childhood seem outrageous but that's probably what makes it such a unique book. Also, it obviously makes it perfect for adaptation for a movie or TV series. 

Clever. 

So, should you read it?

Absolutely. 

If you loved Where The Crawdads Sing and A Little Life, you'll love this. 

In The Paper Palace , Miranda Cowley Heller creates a world you never want to leave and characters who you become genuinely invested in. 

It's an epic love story, a coming-of-age story, a tale that explores the impact of childhood trauma and the power secrets hold over us. 

Keryn Donnelly is Mamamia's Pop Culture Editor. For more of her TV, film and book recommendations and to see photos of her dog,  follow her on Instagram . 

More like this: 

• Should I Read It? We Were Never Here, the thriller that will pull you out of your reading slump.
• Should I Read It? The Last Thing He Told Me, the bestseller that's about to become a TV series.
• Should I Read It? Malibu Rising, the epic family drama everyone is talking about.

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So just what happened at the end of The Paper Palace?

Want to discuss how Miranda Cowley Heller ’s  debut novel ended? Us too. Warning: contains spoilers!

A book’s acknowledgements can be very telling . At the end of her debut novel, Miranda Cowley Heller tells another story: “When I was in my teens and first attempting to write fiction, my grandfather Malcolm Cowley gave me a piece of advice that I have carried with me: the only thing you need to know, he said, is that every good story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, with the end foreshadowed in the beginning.”

Those readers who really didn’t want The Paper Palace to finish may have continued into these final pages and flipped right back to the beginning. What Heller leaves us with, after all, is a delicious ambiguity: does our heroine Elle leave her husband Peter – a man she loves, the adoring father of her children – for Jonas, her childhood sweetheart, or not?

Miranda Cowley Heller, a debut author with decades of experience in storytelling (having worked as a books editor and as Head of Drama Series at HBO), deploys the pacing and plot of a binge-worthy box-set, with writing that immerses you in the cool ocean waters of Cape Cod. No wonder The Paper Palace has won accolades from literary giants such as Meg Wolitzer, Nick Hornby and Nina Stibbe.

'I didn't have any idea who Elle would choose. In fact, the choice was made in the last two, three pages of the novel'

But the same question that Elle poses throughout the novel – a choice, between Peter and Jonas – remains at its end. The pond that she swims in during the novel’s opening pages remains her morning ritual at its end. Only, this time, Jonas is on the shore. The ending leaves just enough open to question that while Heller admits she never intended to make the ending ambiguous, she has been pleasantly surprised by how many readers “have been debating the Jonas vs. Peter ending” – something she says is “great and interesting.”

In the wake of the book's released, the debate over the ending has become increasingly feverish. There are entire forum threads dedicated to it, in fact, on Reddit and Goodreads , with many people asking the same question: who did Elle choose?

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Interestingly, the decision wasn’t always clear-cut for Heller, either. “I didn't have any idea who Elle would choose. In fact, the choice was made in the last two, three pages of the novel. It was very important for Elle not to be 'directed' by me but to live out the process organically.”

Heller followed her grandfather’s advice: throughout the novel, the pond remains a tether for Elle, for her family and her lovers. Her choice – and the dilemma it causes – is painted through the landscape like salt spray. In the hours after her infidelity, Elle treads a fine balance between craving the safety of the shallows (what Peter offers) and her “love” of “the fear, the catch of breath in my throat” (which Jonas provides). We just don’t know which she chooses.

There are clues, and potential red herrings, woven throughout The Paper Palace . The entire novel dwells on marriage and its frailties. Unhappy marriages run their way through the book as they do Elle’s heritage: her grandparents married three times a-piece; her mother Wallace had reams of lovers; her father had three wives. “In my day, we simply divorced and remarried,” Wallace quips. “So much simpler. Refreshing, even. Like buying a new suit of clothes.” When she takes off her wedding ring – “I squeeze it tight against my life line one final time before leaving it behind me on the step and heading down the path to take my swim” – is Elle protecting it from loss, or walking away from her marriage?

'In Elle's case she is choosing between a great love and a great love. There is no bad choice, but that also means there is no good choice.'

If Elle were to leave Peter, she would risk subjecting her children to the turbulence and trauma that her own parents’ relationships inflicted on her childhood. And yet, Elle’s mother is the only person who seems to understand her predicament. Early on, Elle tells the reader “the best lesson my mother ever taught me: there are two things in life you never regret – a baby and a swim.” In the novel’s closing pages, Wallace gives her some “serious advice”: “There are some swims you do regret, Eleanor. The problem is, you never know until you take them.” It suggests that Wallace is aware of Eleanor’s choice, and is telling her that while leaving Peter for Jonas may be a mistake, she’ll never know unless she does it.

When asked about the lesson of regret, Heller says it’s something that she heard “growing up on the Cape in the summers, something the grandmother of a friend had once said, and it’s always stuck with me.”

“Because for me, life always felt so messy and disorganised, and I love the idea of something that makes life feel so clear. Definitive. Crisp,” Heller continues. “And Wallace is declarative in that way. But also: I believe it's true.”

The seasons play a pertinent role in The Paper Palace , too. Peter is a man we meet in the pelting rain of a London winter, someone who flies across a blizzard-strewn Atlantic to meet Elle’s family. But Jonas belongs to the summer; big skies and salty air and pond swims. Peter wears beautifully made shoes of worn leather; Jonas is usually barefoot. One man she sees all year, the other only for a season. And yet, as she explains at the novel’s end, the summer retreat where she and Jonas met “is in my bones”. The Paper Palace withstands time: “the difficult, lonely winters; always threatening to fall into ruin, yet still standing, year after year, when we return”. Elle's relationship with Jonas, Elle suggests, as she has done throughout, is far more than some adolescent summer fling.

Heller says that associating the two men with place was more about “how place can ground us and shape us.” What was more important to her, though, “was the notion of choice, of the big or tiny moments that can completely change the direction our lives take. In Elle's case she is choosing between a great love and a great love. There is no bad choice, but that also means there is no good choice. And Elle does have to choose. So, understanding how she got to this impossible crossroads over the course of 50 years, and then seeing how her decision unfolds and unravels was definitely an idea that steered me.

So what are we to make of it all? One Reddit user, loyallong86 , cannily went back to the beginning of The Paper Palace  after reading it and re-read the book, skipping the flashbacks and piecing together only the present-day events that make up Elle's 24 lifechanging hours. Their conclusion? "Elle's choice is clear as she gets in the pond" (you can read the full breakdown here ).

Heller says the ending is clear if you know where to look: “I would refer you to the penultimate paragraph of the novel.” Perhaps what The Paper Palace ’s ending shows us is that, when we really connect with a book’s characters, it’s not always easy for us to accept the decisions they make.

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Book review: The Paper Palace

Some books don't let you go. The Paper Palace is one of those books. From the first lines through the author's acknowledgements, this book had me completely immersed in Elle’s world and life.

Talya Blaine

This is the first of what I plan to be many romance novel (and love story) reviews on this blog, because in addition to writing, I love-love-love to read.

Some books don't let you go. The Paper Palace is one of those books. I read most of it in a single day, a similar timeline to the current-day events in the story. Seventy-two (plus-plus) hours after finishing it, I'm still thinking about it. In a good way. It's not a romance; as the internet will tell you,

Spoiler alert 🤐 (click down arrow to read)

there is no unambiguous HEA (happily ever after). 

I would call it a love story. Which is fitting, IMO – I fell hard.

From the first lines through the author's acknowledgements, this story had me completely immersed in Elle’s world and life. Not that every scene was easy to read – many weren't, for different reasons – but immersed I was. The kettle ponds of the Cape, the creaking cabin steps, the mossy bank by the spring. The violence and disappointment, the heartbreak and shame, the soul-binding chemistry, the beauty.

And let's not neglect to mention the sexy (if illicit), pitch-perfect scene at the beach tent.

I suspected partway through that The Paper Palace might end with ambiguity, but I do think Elle's decision at the very end of the story was clear. I say "very end" because I believe she made a decision...

Spoiler alert

while at the barbeque and, afterward, cleaning up the raccoons' mess

...and then at daybreak made a different choice.

I read the ebook version of the book and, although I tend not to read a book twice or listen to audiobooks (I’m too easily distracted), I will listen to this one. I want to hear the words spoken aloud. The writing is sublime—lyrical and evocative.

The Paper Palace reminded me why, and just how much, I love to read. Overall, in a word, stunning. Thank you, Miranda Cowley Heller.

Review note: I purchased this title. All opinions my own.

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