The Paper Palace

This book! I lost myself in it. I noticed I'd been reading it for a while and looked down, shocked to find myself on page 199! Terrific plotting. Whenever an author can make me desperate to read backstory, I have to tip my hat to them. I loved the ambiguity, the theme, the characterizations. I admire Miranda Cowley Heller's restraint in writing the subtext. Often, she allowed us to put together what was happening though the setting, the physical responses, the tertiary characters. I loved how she gave me the space to dive deep and interpret for myself. The ending was deliciously ambitious and imperfect and I thought, completely fitting with the characterization.
While I enjoyed the pacing of the short scenes, I felt there were two downsides to this approach. Even if you tell me what year it is, I'm not going to do the math to figure out how old Elle was, and her age has a significant impact on the context of the scene. Secondly, nearly every scene begins with grounding the reader in the setting, which yes, is essential, but with so many short scenes, it also got very repetitive. By the end of the book I found myself instinctively skipping the first paragraph, skimming the second, then settling in where the action started. Other than those things, I thought The Paper Palace was the perfect read.