The Paper Palace (Reese's Book Club)

The Paper Palace (Reese's Book Club)

by Miranda Cowley Heller

Narrated by Nan McNamara

Unabridged — 12 hours, 37 minutes

The Paper Palace (Reese's Book Club)

The Paper Palace (Reese's Book Club)

by Miranda Cowley Heller

Narrated by Nan McNamara

Unabridged — 12 hours, 37 minutes

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

When 50-year-old Elle returns to her family’s summer home and reconnects with her childhood love, she must decide what her future will look like. Miranda Cowley Heller’s debut novel is an utterly compelling story of love and desire, secrets, lies and paths not taken. It’s perfect for reading at home or on the beach, like Commonwealth by Ann Patchett or The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer.

REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

OVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE

THE PAPER PALACE IS:


“Filled with secrets, love, lies and a summer beach house. What more could you ask?”-Parade

“A deeply emotional love story...the unraveling of secrets, lies and a very complex love triangle.” -Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club July '21 Pick)

"Nail-biting." -Town & Country


“A magnificent page-turner.” -Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author

“[An] irresistible placement of a complicated family in a bewitching place.” -The New York Times

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.


“This house, this place, knows all my secrets.”

It is a perfect August morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace”-the family summer place which 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 twenty-four 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.

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2021 - AudioFile

Narrator Nan McNamara is the ideal choice to present this first-person novel about a family retreat on Cape Cod. The rustic compound affectionately called “The Paper Palace” has shaped the life of Elle Bishop. This story moves across time, involving loves, lies, secrets, and revelations. McNamara gives Elle a natural-sounding American voice that changes with her age or emotional footing. Her hideous stepbrother, Conrad, is memorably portrayed. Listeners can hear the menace in his voice as clearly as his Louisiana drawl. Equally evocative is the voice of Wallace, Elle’s mother. Her acid tone is Waspy, witty, and wonderfully rendered. The pace of this lyrical novel is leisurely but worth one’s time. D.L.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

Praise for The Paper Palace:

"Beguiling."Vogue, "The Best Books to Read This Summer"

"Nail-biting." Town & Country

“This one’s filled with secrets, love, lies and a summer beach house. What more could you ask?Parade, “Best Beach Reads”

“The gorgeous scenery of Back Woods (a stand-in for Wellfleet, Mass.) provides an atmospheric backdrop to Elle’s ruminations and revelatory flashbacks.” Los Angeles Times, “10 best books for your summer beach reading”

"Ensconced in her family’s rustic compound on Cape Cod for an annual summer trip, Elle Bishop is at a crossroads, forced to choose between the two great loves of her life. Should she run off with the longtime bestie she’s secretly been in love with since they endured a ghastly childhood trauma together? Or stay with her cherished husband, a dashing Brit who’s the father of her kids?" People

“Doubly blessed when it comes to descriptive powers, Heller is as good on nature as she is on interiors.”The New York Times

"An assured debut. A sultry tale of Waspish New England that captures the spirit of Updike and Cheever." The Times (London)

"Tightly woven and immediate, The Paper Palace takes us deep into a vivid summer landscape, a family, and a private, longstanding love story, and holds us there from start to finish." —Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion

“The Paper Palace turned out to be the very page-turner I needed. If you want to learn something about love over a long time—how it can hurt, how it can soar— read this book.” Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

“Miranda Cowley Heller has written a magnificent page-turner, a love story that shimmers with desire, intelligence, and humor. Lush and gorgeously written, The Paper Palace is as intoxicating as a summer night by the sea. I didn’t want it to end.” —Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, New York Times bestselling author of Good Company

"It's been ages since I was so absorbed in a contemporary novel. I loved it." Nick Hornby, New York Times bestselling author of Just Like You

“Set in the physical and psychic landscape of Cape Cod, The Paper Palace is a fever dream of a novel, luminous with love and shot through with humor and heartbreak. It is a book that explores the indelibility of childhood, what it means to be shaped by place, and all that is unpredictable about the human heart. I couldn’t put it down." —Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game

"A beautifully constructed, wonderfully intelligent and beguiling novel, rich with a multitude of pleasures." —William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart

"It's glorious and gorgeous. I was absolutely immersed and gripped and I'm devastated to have finished it." —Marian Keyes, author of Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married

"In rich and sensuous prose, Cowley Heller, cracks open the human heart and exposes her character's choices: the paths not taken and the devastating consequences. I smelled the old cabins and the backwoods, felt the pond water lapping around my ankles, experienced the love and loss of family. A perceptive and powerful story which will stay with me for a long time." —Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground

"I can't think of a more brilliant debut than The Paper Palace. Enticing, assured and multi-layered, it introduces a major new voice in American fiction . . . A marvel."—Cressida Connolly, auhor of The Happiest Days

"Absolutely phenomenal novel - dazzling writing and utterly addictive. Read it."—Rosamund Lupton, New York Times bestselling author of Sister

"It felt as if I read The Paper Palace in one go. It was completely immersive, and shocking, and utterly alive. I loved it." —Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina

"Beautifully written, richly compelling, The Paper Palace is as dark and uncompromising as it is tender and lyrical. Here is a love triangle that keeps you turning the pages, a vivid evocation of place, and an exploration of the one of the most unsettling of secrets." —Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

"Captivating debut… full of lush atmospheric details. This will keep the reader guessing all the way to the end.”Publishers Weekly

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

AUGUST 2021 - AudioFile

Narrator Nan McNamara is the ideal choice to present this first-person novel about a family retreat on Cape Cod. The rustic compound affectionately called “The Paper Palace” has shaped the life of Elle Bishop. This story moves across time, involving loves, lies, secrets, and revelations. McNamara gives Elle a natural-sounding American voice that changes with her age or emotional footing. Her hideous stepbrother, Conrad, is memorably portrayed. Listeners can hear the menace in his voice as clearly as his Louisiana drawl. Equally evocative is the voice of Wallace, Elle’s mother. Her acid tone is Waspy, witty, and wonderfully rendered. The pace of this lyrical novel is leisurely but worth one’s time. D.L.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940173326324
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 07/06/2021
Edition description: Unabridged
Sales rank: 612,307

Read an Excerpt

1

Today. August 1, the Back Woods.

6:30 a.m.

Things come from nowhere. The mind is empty and then, inside the frame, a pear. Perfect, green, the stem atilt, a single leaf. It sits in a white ironstone bowl, nestled among the limes, in the center of a weathered picnic table, on an old screen porch, at the edge of a pond, deep in the woods, beside the sea. Next to the bowl is a brass candlestick covered in drips of cold wax and the ingrained dust of a long winter left on an open shelf. Half-eaten plates of pasta, an unfolded linen napkin, dregs of claret in a wine bottle, a breadboard, handmade, rough-hewn, the bread torn not sliced. A mildewed book of poetry lies open on the table. "To a Skylark," soaring into the blue-painful, thrilling-replays in my mind as I stare at the still life of last night's dinner. "The world should listen then, as I am listening now." He read it so beautifully. "For Anna." And we all sat there, spellbound, remembering her. I could look at him and nothing else for eternity and be happy. I could listen to him, my eyes closed, feel his breath and his words wash over me, time and time and time again. It is all I want.

Beyond the edge of the table, the light dims as it passes through the screens before brightening over the dappled trees, the pure blue of the pond, the deep-black shadows of the tupelos at the water's edge where the reach of the sun falters this early in the day. I ponder a quarter-inch of thick, stale espresso in a dirty cup and consider drinking it. The air is raw. I shiver under the faded lavender bathrobe-my mother's-that I put on every summer when we return to the camp. It smells of her, and of dormancy tinged with mouse droppings. This is my favorite hour in the Back Woods. Early morning on the pond before anyone else is awake. The sunlight clear, flinty, the water bracing, the whippoorwills finally quiet.

Outside the porch door, on the small wooden deck, sand has built up between the slats-it needs to be swept. A broom leans against the screen, indenting it, but I ignore it and head down the little path that leads to our beach. Behind me, the door hinges shriek in resistance.

I drop 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 will be drawn by the smell of sex as I open and close my legs. I'm suddenly overwhelmed by the need to get back to the safety of the shallows, where I can see the sandy bottom. I wish I were braver. But I also love the fear, the catch of breath in my throat, my thrumming heartbeat as I step out of the water.

I wring as much as I can from my long hair, grab a threadbare towel from the clothesline my mother has strung between two scraggly pines, lie down on the warm sand. An electric-blue dragonfly lands on my nipple and perches there before moving on. An ant crawls over the Saharan dunes my body has just created in its path.

Last night I finally fucked him. After all these years of imagining it, never knowing if he still wanted me. And then the moment I knew it would happen: all the wine, Jonas's beautiful voice in ode, my husband Peter lying on the sofa in a grappa haze, my three children asleep in their cabin, my mother already at the sink washing dishes in her bright yellow rubber gloves, ignoring her dinner guests. Our eyes lingered one beat too long. I got up from the noisy table, took my underpants off in the pantry, and hid them behind the breadbox. Then I went out the back door into the night. I waited in the shadows, listening to the sounds of plate, water, glass, silver clunking together beneath the suds. Waited. Hoped. And then he was there, pushing me up against the wall of the house, reaching under my dress. "I love you," he whispered. I gasped as he shoved himself into me. And I thought: now there is no turning back. No more regrets for what I haven't done. Now only regrets for what I have done. I love him, I hate myself; I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story.



1966. December, New York City.

I am screaming. I scream and gasp until, at last, my mother realizes something is wrong. She races with me to the doctor's office, imagining herself Miss Clavel as she runs up Park Avenue, terrified, clutching her three-month-old baby. My father is racing, too, briefcase in hand, up Madison Avenue from the Fred F. French Building. Thoughts stammering, afraid of his own impotence, now, as in everything he does. The doctor tells them there's no time-if they wait, the baby will die-and rips me from my mother's arms. On the operating table, he slices me open across the belly like a ripe watermelon. A tumor has snaked itself around my intestines, and a toxicity of shit has built up behind its iron grasp, pushing poison into my tiny body. The shit always builds up, and surviving it is the key, but this I will not learn for many years.

While the doctor is inside me, he cuts off an ovary, careless, rushing to carve the death out of life. This, too, I will not learn for many years. When I do, my mother cries for me for the second time. "I'm so sorry," she says. "I should have made him be more careful . . ."-as if she'd had the power to change my fate, but chosen not to use it.

Later I lie in a hospital cot, arms tied down at my sides. I scream, cry, alive, livid with rage at this injustice. They will not let my mother feed me. Her milk dries up. Almost a week passes before they free my hands from their shackles. "You were always such a happy baby," my father says. "Afterward," my mother says, "you never stopped screaming."

7:30 a.m.

I roll over onto my stomach, rest my head on my forearms. I love the salty-sweet way my skin smells when I've been lying in the sun-a nut-gold, musky smell, as if I'm being cured. Down the path that leads from the main house to the bedroom cabins I hear a quiet slam. Someone is up. Feet crunch on dry leaves. The outdoor shower is turned on. Pipes groan awake for the day. I sigh, grab my bathrobe from the beach and head back up to the house.

Our camp has one main building-the Big House-and four one-bedroom cabins along a pine-needled path that hugs the shoreline of the pond. Small clapboard huts, each with a roof pitched to keep the snow off, a single skylight, long clerestory windows on either side. Old-fashioned, rustic, no frills. Exactly what a New England cabin should be. Between the path and the pond is a thin windbreak of trees-flowering clethra, bay and wild blueberry bushes-that protects us from the prying eyes of fishermen and the overenthusiastic swimmers who manage to make it across to our side of the pond from the small public access beach on the far shore. They aren't allowed to come aground, but sometimes they will tread water five feet away, directly in front of our tree line, oblivious to the fact that they are trespassing on our lives.

Down a separate path, behind the cabins, is the old bathhouse. Peeling paint, a rusted enamel sink covered in the beige flecks of dead moths drawn to the overhead light at night; an ancient claw-foot tub that has been there since my grandfather built the camp; an outdoor shower-hot and cold pipes attached to a tupelo tree, water pooling straight into the ground, runneling the sandy path.

The Big House is one large room-living room and kitchen, with a separate pantry-built of cinder blocks and tar paper. Wide-board floors, heavy beams, a massive stone fireplace. On rainy days, we close up the doors and windows and sit inside, listen to the crackle of the fire, force ourselves to play Monopoly. But where we really live-where we read, and eat, and argue, and grow old together-is on the screen porch, as wide as the house itself, which faces out to the pond. Our camp isn't winterized. There would be no point. By late September, when the weather turns chilly and all the summer houses have been shut down for the season, the Back Woods is a lonely place-still beautiful in the starker light, but solemn and sepulchral. No one wants to be here once the leaves fall. But when summer breaks again, and the woods are dense, and the blue hero's come back to nest and wade in the bright pond, there is no better place on earth than this.

The moment I step back inside, onto the porch, I'm hit by a wave of longing, a quicksilver running through my solar plexus like homesickness. I know I should clear the table before the others come in for breakfast, but I want to memorize the shape of it-re-live last night crumb by crumb, plate by plate, etch it with an acid bath onto my brain. I run my fingers over a purple wine stain on the white linen tablecloth, put Jonas's glass to my lips and try to taste him there. I close my eyes, remembering the slight pressure of his thigh against mine under the table. Before I was sure he wanted me. Wondering, breathless, whether it was accident or intention.

In the main room, everything is exactly as it has always been: pots hanging on the wall above the stove, spatulas on cup hooks, a mason jar of wooden spoons, a faded list of telephone numbers thumbtacked to a bookshelf, two director's chairs pulled up to the fireplace. Everything is the same, and yet, as I cross the kitchen to the pantry, I feel as though I am walking through a different room, more in focus, as if the air itself has just awakened from a deep sleep. I let myself out through the pantry door, stare at the cinder-block wall. Nothing shows. No traces, no evidence. But it was here, we were here, embedding ourselves in each other forever. Grinding, silent, desperate. I suddenly remember my underpants hidden behind the breadbox and am just pulling them on under my bathrobe when my mother appears.

"You're up early, Elle. Is there coffee?" An accusation.

"I was just about to make it."

"Not too strong. I don't like that espresso stuff you use. I know-you think it's better . . ." she says, in a false, humoring voice that drives me insane.

"Fine." I don't feel like arguing this morning.

My mother settles herself in on the porch sofa. It is just a hard horsehair mattress covered in old gray cloth, but it's the coveted place in the house. From here you can look out at the pond, drink your coffee, read your book leaning against the ancient pillows, their cotton covers specked with rust. Who knew that even cloth could grow rusty with time?

It is so typical of her to usurp the good spot.

My mother's hair, straw-blond, now streaked with gray, is twisted up in an absent-minded, messy bun. Her old gingham nightgown is frayed. Yet she still manages to look imposing-like a figurehead on the prow of an eighteenth-century New England schooner, beautiful and stern, wreathed in laurels and pearls, pointing the way.

"I'm just going to have my coffee, and then I'll clear the table," I say.

"If you clear the table, I'll do the rest of the dishes. Mmmm," she says, "thank you," as I hand her a cup of coffee. "How was the water?"

"Perfect. Cold."

The best lesson my mother ever taught me: there are two things in life you never regret-a baby and a swim. Even on the coldest days of early June, as I stand looking out at the brackish Atlantic, resenting the seals that now rear their hideous misshapen heads and draw great whites into these waters, I hear her voice in my head, urging me to plunge in.

"I hope you hung your towel on the line. I don't want to see another pile of wet towels today. Tell the kids."

"It's on the line."

"Because if you don't yell at them, I will."

"I got it."

"And they need to sweep out their cabin. It's a disaster. And don't you do it, Elle. Those children are completely spoilt. They are old enough to . . ."

A bag of garbage in one hand, my coffee cup in the other, I walk out the back door, letting her litany drift off into the wind.

Her worst advice: Think Botticelli. Be like Venus rising on a half shell, lips demurely closed, even her nakedness modest. My mother's words of advice when I moved in with Peter. The message arrived on a faded postcard she'd picked up years before in the Uffizi gift shop: Dear Eleanor, I like your Peter very much. Please make an effort not to be so difficult all the time. Keep your mouth closed and look mysterious. Think Botticelli. Love, Mummy.

I dump the garbage in the can, slam the lid shut, and stretch the bungee cord tight across it to keep out the raccoons. They are clever creatures with their long dexterous fingers. Little humanoid bears, smarter and nastier than they look. We've been waging war against each other for years.

"Did you remember to put the bungee cord back on, Elle?" My mother says.

"Of course." I smile demurely and start clearing plates.


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