 And you're very welcome back and you two together there you see a heartbreak with Roseanne Cash and Bruce Springsteen and before that Mary Coughlin and Double Cross. Joining me in the studio tonight as promised I've got Connie McGrenahan and we're going to be reviewing the Paper Palace by Miranda Coiley Heller and you're very welcome. Connie? I'm sort of I can see you. I thought you would have called me Miranda. So Connie the Paper Palace I asked you now for a choice for the book club this and you recommended this and the Paper Palace could you just give us a little bit about what is about. Okay I actually took some notes a lot of notes so the book actually centres around the main characters Elle and she's probably about my vintage in her early 50s and her family and the narrative for the book actually jumps between the present and past. The present section actually just focuses on two days but it feels a lot longer. Elle has been brought up in a very non-conventional manner with a mother who is a very unorthodox view of marriage and has been married a number of times as was her father. Adultery and sexual abuse played a large part in her lives even her young life and then her teenage years for both her and her sister Anna. So the backdrop for the story is in Cape Cod and it's Paper Palace which is described as a ramshackle of a holiday village which was built by her grandfather and it comes across as being somewhat like a commune. There's so many of them in it so at the beginning of the novel right at the start so I'm not giving anything away we encounter Elle who is having what you might call a brief encounter of her own. She's left her husband and family and friends playing games indoors and in the sitting room was she and her childhood friend Jonas are outside playing their own private game. She and Jonas share very private and scandalous secret from from their youth and this changed their friendship forever and the guilt of this secret has kept them apart and but she feels that Jonas is her true love and she's now married married in English journalist Pete and they have three children the story essentially goes over the past number of years of how she met Peter and how they came to where they are in their lives now and the paths they choose the chapters that are in here now center around whether I was going to choose her last love long last love Jonas or is she gonna choose her husband Peter and that is really the main premise of the story I suppose. And I suppose Jonas and Peter she loves both of them in different ways and Peter is such a really nice guy and it's not that she's on happy in her marriage she has a very solid marriage and two kids and she's very happy but there's this this connection with Jonas that she can't really get out of her system. Yeah I think Peter represents the stability that she didn't have growing up because her father was so weak and he had no backbone he had a number of girlfriends a number of different wives and he always chose them over her he never chose her and that was always a grievance with her and then I suppose Peter and her own mother was very unorthodox and very caustic you know she clearly loved her but didn't give her any affection so I think that Peter was so stable and the way he you know the way he treated his children she got great joy out of that you know as opposed to how she was brought up. And as you said the relationship really is between Jonas and L and Peter but there are other relationships too the relationship with their mother and her father. She seemed to have a very as you said an unstable background and you felt sorry for her she was just pushed from tiller to post and her mother and father they always put their their love or their partner before their children which I'm sure was very sad. Yes she was used to have to go and stay with her father weekends the mother essentially couldn't wait to get rid of her and her sister and sent them off on buses and trains when they were no age and then this particular time the father's new wife Joanne didn't like them so they didn't even stay with the father they ended up staying with Joanne's parents you know and that's what we were saying there was such a huge cast of characters it kind of got a bit confusing because there was so much bed hopping going on and at one point you didn't know who who was who it was quite you know you get mixed up very easy and then there was a relationship between herself and her elder sister Anna which I thought was very well portrayed because Anna was the elder sister and in their early years they didn't get on that bill but then as as they grew and matured their relationship became much stronger and Anna was she was forced to go to boarding school because what was it her mother's new husband Leo whose son Conrad hit her or something so she didn't like Conrad so she got turfed off to boarding school and then Conrad got her bedroom and then of course Conrad is another kettle of fish a nasty piece of work is a yes yes he was he was absolutely horrible and like Elle was told about abuse when she was young how her mother had been abused and how the mother's mother her grandmother was aware of this and actually caught caught some of it and caught the man in the act of doing it to his daughter and she slapped her daughter and the women were very much for the men you know they weren't for their children that was her grandmother I can't remember what her name was but then her mother Wallace you know was you know it was it was like marry it was like adultery was just you know commonplace she says you don't put up with a unhappy marriage she says you just change it like you do a suit and she says you don't be sad or she says sad people are much more interesting anyway you know so get over it kind of thing it was tough the way the way the book is structured Connie it goes like as it all happens within 24 hours but you get the flashbacks over 50 years did you find that that worked well I did I did I liked it you see I like the book overall I found the book very interesting and I did like that I like it when things you know like a pendulum I enjoy that to see how we got where we are and and as well you didn't know the ending you know the way sometimes at the start when it goes like that you might know the ending but in this case we didn't know the ending you know they sometimes it tells you the ending at the start but no I enjoyed it I like to see the path I like to see you know where we've got to you know and no I enjoyed that enjoyed it yeah and some some people have described it as a page turner now I have to admit that at the beginning I found all the characters just very confusing and it took me it seemed to be 50 or 60 pages before I got into the book and then I thought yes this is a really good story and you know it's very very curious to see how it was going to go did you find out or was that just me no not because as I said to you before we went on there I've read it now a couple of times because I did read it a while back and then I reread it for another occasion and I rekind of skimmed through it again and I found that I was finally understanding who the people were do you remember Dixon who was a family friend and he was in the apartment with a girl there was a lot of there was a lot of reference sexual references and a lot of that going on and I wasn't mad about that do you know what I mean she was very explicit the writers very very explicit in her writing but you know as I say I didn't like that but no I just know there's so many characters oh yeah yeah because Dixon was the one I kept thinking who's Dixon you know and I think it took me to my third go to realize he was just mom's family friend because she married him why is he here again you know there was just so many of them and you remember the car the grandparents and then there was a young fellow there feeding mice to the snake like it was odd there was a certain oddness to that too I sort of thought that maybe there wasn't a need for all those sort of minor characters you know that's at the beginning but and I said that just put me off at the beginning but once I got into the book then I certainly thought that it was it was it was a really really good book and I suppose it would not fit it across as something like 50 she is of gray or something that it is it is quite explicit and it is but it's so sad yeah like it's desperately desperately sad like you're talking about abuse and you're talking about children you know seeing their parents being unfaithful seeing not not being loved you know they weren't loved and then of course it happened to L herself you know when she couldn't tell anybody she wasn't able to tell anybody and that secret you know went went through her with throughout her life you know she wasn't able to tell her sister she wasn't now Jonas was aware of it and of course that's a huge part of the book as well what happened there you know and I suppose that at the end of the story and again was talked about that in a minute she's just going to have to choose between Jonas and and Peter and I suppose Jonas knows her secret so if she chooses Jonas she's going to have to live with that secret it's going to be more open or talked about but you there's that there's another little twist as well there's another little twist before you come to the end she actually goes back and she meets up with Conrad sister Rosemary okay and this is in the present tense her husband Peter's called to Memphis away from Cape Cape Cod so that's where Conrad and Leo were from so she goes back to Memphis and meets up with Conrad sister Rosemary and what Rosemary tells her pits a whole new if she'd heard that 50 years ago right she might not have felt the guilt that she felt throughout her whole life Rosemary revealed something so it changes everything and we were going to have your sister orla orla Carolyn here today unfortunately she couldn't make it but she did give you a synopsis of what she did very brief yes very brief orla said to me orla wasn't keen she says that I would give this book five out of ten she's for me it was too descriptive vivid descriptions are okay from time to time but I felt the book was filled with too many unnecessary descriptions of natures of nature characters are not very likable particularly the mother who showed little affection for her children and she felt that the book she come with a warning as it could be triggering for some people it was quite sexually explicit some nice characters and everyone enjoys a love story but I won't say what she says because she gives it away then but she's I won't say what she gives a she kind of gives away the ending there but that was orla wasn't that keen you know and I I felt in her right like there was a certain amount I kind of called it grimy do you know what I mean she was so vivid in her descriptions and it was all sort of like there was grease splattered like Peter was smoking heavily heavily and coughing and fried an egg and they splattered grease on a shirt and she was talking about the fish in the pond a blinger feet and where was all the dead skin going there was there was this sort of griminess to it you know you kind of likened it there to craw dad's yes I thought craw dad's was more beautiful you know where this it was I did love it as well the descriptions but they were kind of like they were like sort of wild and dirty sort of do you get me yeah you know she was on about the ants and the turtles and she kind of focused on all these you know things that were grimy and like talking about the thread bear towels and the paper palace and her mother's old nightgown frayed you know you get this description of a little wee bit gray rather than blue you know your picture cape cod yes and you think of it as blue and yellow even I seen it as gray you know and it was the ending is quite controversial we're just talking about it before we went on air Connie and she's going to choose between one of the other were you surprised by the ending or did you enjoy the ending of some people didn't enjoy yourself do you know what Jean I nearly missed it I nearly missed it so she gives sort of Peter a choice about doing something and he very very very insignificant what seems very insignificant and he get he replies and essentially that kind of paved the way for the ending and it came just about two seconds later and I sort of went oh what happened there and I had to go back and I was under no doubt as to what happened where all it was ringing me and saying what happened there at the end you know what who has she chosen so I says well I think she's chosen and like of course I went and googled and looked and talk about this ending was huge everybody was talking about this ending you know I felt I I understood the end and I would like to have gone on another wee bit I would like to have seen how her choice impacted but you didn't you know it just ended so out of ten or the city was five I was very very tight so what about yourself see I would give it eight yeah I would give it eight because I enjoyed it I enjoyed it and I thought what I enjoyed the most about it was I thought it was interesting you know I looked forward to opening the book and reading it you know it wasn't boring you know and I think I would give it a seven and a half to me and I the reason why I wouldn't give it higher is because it took me a while to get into it but I would definitely recommend people to read it oh I would yeah yeah it's and as I said it was it was well there's been that book of choice when it came out and it was a New York Times number one bestseller so it's well worth the read great talking point yes yeah yes great talking point great book for that so many thanks for coming out this very very cool night coming and hopefully Orla and yourself will join us in the new year for another book we'll get out to make her husband now and let him take me I show for a wait thanks a million cheers to you now good boy keep your house on pet why we're playing dinner at the North Pole remember so we need to wear our big warm coats inside when it comes to food or heat many families will face impossible choice