“The novel is a pretty outdated technology, but that is exactly why we need it. The form is so archaic that it can’t be fucked with.”

I’ve read almost all of Laura van den Berg’s work. She has an irreproducible style, one that marries the uncanny with the brutally real, contained in narratives that I find to be truly hypnotizing. Her previous book “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears” is my all-time favorite story collection. Here, through a rollicking story of Florida, a pandemic, ominous virtual reality devices, ghostwriting, mental illness, and a world on the brink of collapse, “State of Paradise” is a piece of weird fiction that at its heart is an exploration of storytelling; how stories provide form to the elusive aspects of living.

I’ve been drawn to contemporary literature that explores diaristic forms, a variant of autofiction that plays with an author’s physical act of keeping a diary, exposing the author’s seemingly private dialogue with themselves. Here, van den Berg uses this structure yet interestingly (and perhaps unconventionally) leans directly into the speculative. The “reality vs. fiction” distinction tends to pop in novels I love, and even when this story dips hard into the fiction, Van Den Berg’s skill is in keeping the reality lurking right over your shoulder, in often horrific ways. She has done this to varying extents in her previous work, but I loved the ambition of blurring all of these lines to create a new, monstrous thing, which also happens be extremely fun to read.

“The more I read, the more, and the less, I understand.”

Read if you liked / Works brought to mind: Y/N by Esther Yi, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman, The Answers by Catherine Lacey, Weather by Jenny Offill

I featured this book in a new release video prior to publication and was very excited to read a literary sci fi set in the swamp land. LOL it's funny to think "literary" and "Florida" are in the same synopsis [I'm from the Miami area haha] but I'M HERE FOR IT. The description is so chaotic, messy, and futuristic. Will update when final review posts, but I'm expecting 5 stars!

I really wanted to love Laura van den Berg's "State of Paradise", but I came away only respecting it for its style are point of view. It's a weird little novel that kept me engaged throughout, but I was never able to get over the hump of truly enjoying it. Even so, it's a smart little book and I really liked van den Berg's style, so I will continue to read her future releases.

Wow this one was a trip. Van den Berg packed a lot into these 224 pages. Her humorous tone, super evocative descriptive writing combined with the uncanny to make this one an absolute trip. It’s litfic questioning what separates fact from fiction, with a side of speculative fiction rooted in the weird mindset of the pandemic days questioning society and humanity with all the fun themes of dependency on technology, late stage capitalism, climate change and more! The book takes a while to set up but I definitely recommend sticking with it.
I don’t think this will be for everyone but if you like “weird lit”, don’t mind not knowing where a book is going or would enjoy an incredibly well written mix of Mona Awad, Ling Ma, Melissa Broader and Jenny Offill, I think this will be for you.

State of Paradise is a surreal and discomfiting exploration of identity, family, and storytelling, set against the eerie backdrop of Florida. The novel follows a ghostwriter grappling with family secrets, strange disappearances, and unsettling phenomena, such as sinkholes and a mysterious virtual reality device. Blending elements of speculative fiction and pandemic unease, the story defies conventional narrative cohesion, offering instead a dreamlike series of events and reflections. Van den Berg skillfully captures the oddities of life, both mundane and supernatural, creating a dark yet thought-provoking atmosphere. Despite its unconventional plot structure, State of Paradise is a deeply immersive and imaginative read, excelling in a haunting prose and broad emotional depth.

What seems like a straightforward pandemic diary turns into something much weirder when the narrator's sister disappears. Van Den Berg is a magician and the story has a lot of twists and turns.

This felt like a dream. I was not expecting the slight sci-fi tones and I am soooo happily surprised. Really loved this one. So weird, so unique, so good.

🌿STATE OF PARADISE🌿 by @lauramvandenberg

Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher, @fsgbooks for the e-ARC. This one came out in July and is on shelves now!

☀️☀️☀️

In a post-pandemic Florida full of emerging militias, economic spiral, and roaming gangs of ominous cats, a woman returns to her childhood home and as the Florida summer heat increases, she wrestles with nostalgia and trauma. Her sister starts spending more and more time on Mind's Eye, a new VR tech that was created by a wealthy entrepreneur who gave out the product for free during the last waning days of lockdowns.

When her sister goes missing and turns up days later splayed across her mother's front yard and is talking about their dead father from another dimension she knows their are weirder things happening than the fact that her belly button is increasingly looking like a black hole.

🌸🌸🌸

This decidedly meta story is about a ghostwriter who wants to write and tell stories but ends up in somewhat of an uncanny story of her own. It is more weird or "off" than creepy or scary and has science fiction fantasy vibes more than horror. I am all about the weird and unusual so I definitely was happy to dip my toes into this one.

The book also delves into lots of political and social commentary about contemporary Florida, the U.S. and our collective history. The descriptions of the sticky, almost delirium inducing humidity and heat make this story firmly grounded in place with a sense of introspection and criticism that only someone born and raised there could conjure up.

Read this one of you enjoy a historical backdrop, strange happenings, a feeling of unravelling and an atmospheric setting.

☀️☀️☀️

Have you ever been to Florida? If so, what part?

I have been multiple times but my favorite was when I got to visit the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral! 😎🚀🛰️🧑‍🚀

💚SMASHBOT💚

#bookreview #bookreviewer #bookthoughts #bibliophile
#booknerd #booklover #booksra #bookstagram #booksbooksbooks #stateofparadise #lauravandenberg

I love a good literary challenge--State of Paradise gave me that. Weird, funny, different, it was a book like no other I had read. I know Florida in itself is an odd place, but this brought levity and humor to the place in a way that was refreshing and intriguing--can I say that about Florida? Overall, a stunning read and I'm now getting all of Van Den Berg's back titles.

There is a creepiness that permeates Laura van den Berg's, State of Paradise. It gets under your skin and seeps into your brain so that when you look around the world feels uneasily different. Every thing is not as it seems. I couldn't put it down.

I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.

State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg defies categorization. It is at once stream of consciousness, southern Gothic, dystopian, and fantastical with a healthy dose of magical realism. This book kept me guessing and surprised me over and over again with its depth and absurdity, and I love any tale with a plot that I can't predict. Having spent a great deal of time in Florida caring for family, I found the descriptions of both the place and people to be spot on. The depiction of the life of a ghostwriter was hilarious and deeply thought-provoking. The setting after a pandemic is all too relatable, as were the bizarre weather events. Despite its absurdist and fantastical storyline and characters, much of State of Paradise hit a bit too close to home for comfort; while hilarious at turns, this novel in no way allows the reader to be comfortable.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this e-galley.

In the book, van den Berg uses her home state of Florida as a lens through which to explore the uncanny, aggressively random nature of reality in twenty-first century America, where technology and desperation conspire to fool us into forming grand narratives out of stochastic noise. Her characters, emerging from the trauma and isolation of a pandemic, struggle to cope in a seemingly transformed world. Meanwhile, a cutting-edge virtual reality wellness device promises to wash all their cares away.

In her 2020 collection “I Hold a Wolf by the Ears,” van den Berg used the tropes of psychological horror to illustrate what it’s like to be a woman in contemporary society. With “State of Paradise,” she’s captured the eerie frisson of what it’s like to think you’re living in a glitching simulation, and shows how the overstimulation of algorithmic curation leads to dark correlations and delusional beliefs about the world, about others, and about ourselves.

It's hard to follow up a masterpiece like "The Third Hotel," and "State of Paradise" has some surprisingly strong echoes of LVDB's first novel, "Find Me."

3.5. The writing was mesmerizing but it’s not my favorite genre so I was a little lost at times. It was eerie and authentic

Laura van den Berg continues to prove herself as a wonderfully strange and gifted talent in the literary fiction space. Her latest novel "State Of Paradise" tells the story of a ghostwriter who moves back home to Florida during the pandemic, but everything isn't as it seems. In fact, the narrator herself uses the phrase when describing the writing assignments she does for her primary client: "The phrase 'everything is not as it seems' appeared in nearly all the book descriptions. Whenever I’m stuck on a chapter, I just write 'everything is not as it seems' and press on. In my line of work, this phrase is like hot sauce or ranch dressing—you can put it on nearly everything."

This is a story of coming home to a place you once knew and how the world is always changing. "The problem, I have decided, with people who never leave home is that they are never forced to become someone else," says the narrator. And so begins her resettling in a once familiar place, a place where "nature is seductive and full of vengeance. To live here is to engage in a ceaseless battle to keep the outdoors from coming in," A must read for fans of the weird and eerie, and a Florida story that isn't all downtrodden ("Florida is the envy of America, our Cro-Magnon governor says at a public address. Florida is a beacon.") This novel is also actually funny, with a strand about an ever-expanding belly button that serves as a sort of otter's tool pouch and some offbeat musings about the oddities of modern living. Weird and wacky in the best possible way.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the advance copy for review.

3.5. Illusions, Delusions, fever dreams, in a relatively shorter novel. It's so hard to describe this book, where the past becomes the present and the future all at once.
During Covid, a 3D or something like it was given to people and some got hooked and virtually disappeared into that world.

Speculative fiction, something different, strange but intriguing and well written.

I am a huge fan of Laura van den Berg's work but this novel did not engage me as so much of her other work has. Her writing as always is beautiful and vivid but the plot was less engaging and the characters less fully realized than in her other works.

I admire writers that can blend everything they want to say into a single fluent narrative. In 'State of Paradise' Laura van den Berg certainly explores an extremely wide range of ideas (addiction, the role of technology in our lives, storytelling, ghostwriting, sectarianism, time travel, to name just a few), but they don't necessarily coalesce into a coherent whole.

And in a way that doesn't really matter, because - this being a Covid-novel too - yet another idea is that our reality is changing and we are no longer able to make sense of it. And what better setting for such a tale than the surreal state of Florida.

I struggled to make sense of it, but once I chose to go with the flow I ended up finding it quite enjoyable and interesting.

This is my first Laura van den Berg read and it was incredibly weird but I ended up really, really liking it.

Before I go on, go and read the synopsis. It’s pretty lengthy and gives you a lot of details.

This story is told in such thoughtful prose and vignettes that toe the line between dreams and reality. There are so many themes explored in metaphor like mental health, grief, family dynamics, the impact of the pandemic, our relationship with technology that allows the reader to self reflect on a deeper level.

Here are some quotes to share with you what I mean

“Sometimes we are called back to things we most want to flee, perhaps because they left such a mark that we don’t know how to leave them behind.”

“We are all responding, we are overflowing with response, even if we have lost track of what exactly we are responding to.”

“Sometimes I wonder what we are supposed to do with our memories. Sometimes I wonder what our memories are for. A latch slips and the past floods in, knocking us flat. We leave places and we don’t leave places. Sometimes I imagine different versions of myself in all the different places I have ever lived, inching through time in parallel.”

My brain was challenged and my emotions were provoked with this lit fiction mixed with sci-fi sometimes mixed with horror of a book and I know it's one that is going to live rent free in my head.

4.5 stars

Much like with The Quick and the Dead, I found this to be a bit overstuffed with ideas, and I also found the ending to be a little too neat and end credits-y. Unlike TQ&tD, I found this to be much more narratively streamlined, and I continue to appreciate van den Berg’s voice.

I have read something of Laura van den Berg's before, but this wasn't my cup of tea. I did a combination of reading and listening, and I just couldn't get into the story here.