Paradise Logic

By: Sophie Kemp

Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Cary Hite

“Here, at last, is someone doing something new.” —The New York Times

“The style is George Saunders meets Ottessa Moshfegh.” —The Guardian

“The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest.” —Gary Shteyngart

A hilarious, surreal, and devastating journey into the mind of Reality Kahn, a young woman on a quest to be the greatest girlfriend of all time.

It was decreed from the moment she was born. Twenty-three-year-old Reality Kahn would embark on a quest so great, so bold. She would become the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies magazine, Girlfriend Weekly.

When she attends a party in Gowanus at a punk venue known as “Paradise,” Reality meets Ariel, who will become her boyfriend. She bravely works for his everlasting affection and joins a clinical trial created by Dr. Zweig Altmann to help her become a more perfect girlfriend. She stars in a new commercial. She learns how to become an indelible host. But Reality will also learn that sheer will and determination, and a very open heart, are not always enough to make true love manifest.

At turns laugh-out-loud funny, tragic, and jarring, Reality’s quest grows ever complicated as the men in her life: Ariel, her waterpark commercial agent Jethro, and Dr. Altmann himself prove treacherous. Paradise Logic is a thrilling, psychosexual breakdown of our obsession with authentic true love, asking whether that is even possible in a patriarchal world, and announces Sophie Kemp as a wholly original, transformative, and brilliant new voice in fiction.

Bowing

QuirkS! Intelligent, poetic, surreal, admirable craft, strange, fun, devastating, cool, other-worldly and this-worldly too. LOVED and admired the writing, books like this don't come around often. Will def be checking out more of Sophie Kemp. I didn't love experiencing this toxic relationships and pretty tragic POV and really felt sad for the emotional/mental truth of this character.... but, WOW did Kemp ever deliver the goods in a completely original way. Bowing.

Genuinely obsessed

I had seen the glowing reviews for this title on goodreads (as well as the scathing reviews from guys on Reddit, which in my book is the greatest endorsement a piece of media can have) and decided I had to pick this one up, especially since it’s only about 6 hours long!

I went into this knowing it was going to be silly, and it was definitely silly. But I didn’t expect how much this title would be able to make an emotional impact on me. Unfortunately I find Reality to be terribly relatable, which is probably a bad thing.

Speaking of Reality, Nancy Wu does an amazing job of capturing her strange stilted way of speaking without it getting old or obnoxious, both narrators put on a wonderful performance but Wu specifically really wow’d me