I loved the auto fiction feel mixed with the surreal. Laura van den Berg brings so much beauty to the messy Florida setting. I appreciated the insight into grief, the pandemic, coming back home again, and sisterhood.

I sped through my early copy of State of Paradise and really enjoyed it. It’s part speculative fiction and part autofiction, based loosely on some details from Laura van den Berg’s life but also exploring how freaky and lowkey terrifying big tech companies and the state of Florida can be. And it’s short! A delightful fever dream of a reading experience that packs a punch—the book delves into climate change, the pandemic, family dynamics, past trauma, addiction, virtual reality, and a little bit of mystery.

Based on the subject matter and vibes, I would put this one in conversation with Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett, Florida by Lauren Groff, and maybe Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin. So if you liked any of those, I bet you’ll enjoy State of Paradise as well.

The unnamed thirty-eight year old protagonist of Laura van den Berg’s latest imaginative fiction yearns to write stories that do not yet exist, but toils as ghost writer for a famous thriller author. She and her academic, running obsessed husband moved in with her mother, a superstitious, retired social worker, in her decaying turn of the century Queen Anne home in Orlando, to help care for her dying father. Her sister lives next door to their mother, “even though the two of them have never gotten along.” After her father dies, she and her husband planned to return to their lives, but their plans were derailed by a pandemic. The pandemic caused minor side effects: the narrator’s sister’s eyes change “from a maritime blue-green to a feline green-gold” and the narrator’s belly button was transformed to an innie from an outie, with room to house a ChapStick and, later, a bar of soap.

Both the narrator’s body and her Florida community become increasingly dystopian. A reality meditation device was distributed by its manufacturer during the quarantine and begins to supplant reality. Although the narrator has no interest in a “mad genius with questionable intentions poking around in my head,” her sister, an insurance adjuster with everything that she claims to want – “ a family, a home, a well-paying job” – spends hours strapped to MIND’S EYE where their dead father interrupts saying “There is something I want you to do.” Major Weather Events occur, sinkholes swallow the earth, there is an epidemic of missing persons, and a digital billboard displays the faces of people who perished during the pandemic, including, mysteriously, the narrator’s sister.

The first person narrator explains that she had always lived in Florida, except when she was admitted to a doctoral program in literature in Boston at twenty-two. Before leaving Florida, she was an alcoholic (“a falling down drunk”) and a suicide risk who was institutionalized at nineteen in the early 2000s. After leaving the Institute, she got sober and stayed that way, knowing that “I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital again.” Being “shipwrecked” at her mother’s home as put her on a collision course with her past, and she ruminates about her stay in the Institute and her deceased father, while her non-Floridian husband observes, “Sometimes I can’t believe a place like this exists.”

The novel is filled with off-kilter humor. When addressing her surprise that she did not enjoy her college studies as mush as she had anticipated, the protagonist explains, “I struggled to understand my classmates, who all knew how to style winter scarves.” When her mother received notice that her ultrasound images had been confused with another patient’s, she did not immediately tell her daughters that she did not have advanced pancreatic cancer, confessing, “she had been feeling a little jealous of all the attention our father – recently diagnosed with a terminal lung condition – was getting now that he was dying.” The protagonist reads the classifieds, and comments “[s]omeone is selling a generator, a two-way radio, a sump pump, and fifteen sandbags. I can only imagine this person has plans to move to higher ground.” Van den Berg has melded climatic, technological and personal disaster in this surreal metafictional mystery. Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Net Galley for an advance copy of this wonderfully weird tale.

I really enjoyed this one. I have been teetering on the edge of a reading slump but I picked this book up and didn’t put it down. I was reading pages at work whenever I could. The characters in this book didn’t even have names, but I still wanted to know more about them and the increasingly strange world around them.

State Of Paradise is a scary glimpse of what could be. Following a woman post-Covid who has moved back to her mother’s house in Florida, the reader is dropped into a weird universe where people are going missing left and right, and the rest of the country is watching Florida with bated breath.

The strange and dystopian always hit a bit harder when there is truth sprinkled in. For anyone concerned about the condition of our country, our world - check out State Of Paradise. The writing in this book was incredible and I can’t wait to check out more from this author!

**Thank you to NetGalley and FSG Books for the eARC of this incredible title.**

This was really weird. And I can't shake the feeling that the weirdest parts were the realest parts.

It is the trifecta: it's fun, funny, AND thought-provoking. It took me a few pages to get used to the writing style, but once I did, I LOVED my reading experience. I laughed out loud (and that rarely happens). I quoted parts to my kids (no they didn't care but I had no one else to tell). It's funny, but it's also unsettling, and sad, and at its core it is, perhaps, about life as a pilgrimage, fiction as a way of dealing with reality, and the lasting effects of trauma. Or maybe it's not about that at all. But it's definitely weird, and I loved it very very much.

I was lucky enough to be given a complimentary copy through NetGalley.

This book has so many different themes running through it that add to the strange feeling brought on by this book. Great read overall.

Welp, like the state of Florida, this novel (novel? Stories? Auto fiction?) is very distinct and I have conflicted feelings about both. The utter weirdness of Florida is well captured. But this book, which felt autobiographical at first goes hard sci Fi at some point. It’s banana pants, but also sort of delightful. But, a bit hard to follow or get your head around.

This slim novel packs worlds into its 224 pages. It begins in a familiar fashion. Our narrator is a ghost writer (for a "very famous thriller author"), she and her husband come south to Florida to help her mother out during an unnamed pandemic. Her sister lives over the fence. There's history between them. There are tornadoes.

There's a ton of atmosphere - the storms, the grasshoppers, cats, a wolf. More than a few times I was reminded of Lauren Groff's short story collection Florida. There is even a "Florida Man" anecdote.

Our narrator frequently alludes to falling back on the quote "Everything is not as it seems" in her writing. This is the title of the second part of the novel. Enough said.

A unique story that dances with both horror and sci-fi, State of Paradise subverts expectations and takes the reader on a wild ride.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the digital ARC.

I don’t even know where to begin with State of Paradise. It was so unique and refreshing and interesting.

This is like if someone took David Sedaris’s “SantaLand Diaries” and somehow turned it into a technothriller. Like I didn’t think that was possible, but van den Berg did it. I laughed and I was hooked.

Only thing that I’d have liked: MORE. I could have lived in this mystery and hilarity a lot longer.

Ghosts fill this speculative auto-fiction-ish novel. It's set in that strange state that is Florida, with its bizarre politicians, its right-wingers, its swamps and humidity and insects and snakes and cats and more, set after the pandemic, or a pandemic, where those stricken, like the unnamed first-person narrator and her sister, experienced serious fevers and strange reactions afterwards. The narrator, in her late 30s, a ghost writer for a famous and rich mystery writer, and the narrator's husband, a long-distance runner and historian writing about medieval pilgrimages, came to Florida from upstate New York where he was teaching, to care for her dying father, and stayed on, in her mother's house when the pandemic struck. They are still there. The ghosts are plentiful - all the narrator's prior selves, including the one that was committed to an institution, the ghost pal of her young niece, the pictures of those who apparently have gone missing, perhaps because of the mysterious AI device called Mind's Eye that takes you where you need to go. If that weren't enough, there's snakes galore and grasshoppers in force, a major weather event of ceaseless rain and flooding, an accidental cult created by the narrator's mother. For most of the novel, I was right there, intrigued by the narrator's voice that is cool and a bit disassociated, her observations keen about the state of the world, about the state of the novel, about the state of one's story, but when another plot point was introduced, having to do with twin sisters, and the identity of the famous mystery writer for whom the narrator is one of many ghosts, and the existence of the different realities afforded by Mind's Eye, I got tired of it and less interested as the narrator became her own secondary character in the story of her life. Still, an engaging read, often unnerving, and also sometimes funny. Really, who today hasn't been warped by, isn't now living a warped reality, caused by our own lives and collective lives, pandemic and politics and weather and technology and our minds in what is our new normal, and how do we forge on trying to create our connection to the new realities?

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the arc.

This is exactly the kind of surreal writing I absolutely love!

Melting realistic and bizarre, Laura van den Berg brings us a sweltering and vivid story about our ghost writer protagonist who, along with her husband, has moved back in with her mother in her Florida hometown. Post pandemic, with her sister as a neighbor, she spirals into this strange sense of consciousness. Mixing past experiences with present bizarro events, this book transported me to the strange gauzy dreamlike state.

As she discovers family secrets, battles her past demons and watches her sister grapple with her sensational virtual reality addiction, I found myself completely enamored with this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the eARC of State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg – available July 9, 2024.

State of Paradise TL;DR:
🦠 Twisty Dystopian Adventure
🤖 Technology vs. Human Condition
😵‍💫 Disorienting and Complex Narrative

State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg is a mind-bending trip into a pandemic-ravaged Florida. Buckle up for a story that's unsettling, original, and will leave you pondering long after the final page.

The protagonist, a ghostwriter seeking refuge at her childhood home, finds herself entangled in a world teetering on the edge. Reality itself seems warped, with the lines between virtual reality (courtesy of the mysterious MIND’S EYE) and the physical world blurring. The narrative is unsettling, but in a way that keeps you glued to the pages.

Be prepared, though, for a story that doesn't hold your hand. Van den Berg throws you headfirst into this strange Florida, trusting you to keep up. Some readers might find this disorienting, but for those who enjoy a challenge, it's part of the novel's charm.

If you're looking for a straightforward beach read, this isn't it. But if you're craving a thought-provoking exploration of technology, reality, and the human condition, State of Paradise is a must-read. Just be ready for the weird.

Before STATE OF PARADISE gets completely surreal and nuts (in a good way) in the last quarter of this book, I was loving it because I related to the character in a lot of ways - a transplant from the North to the wilderness of Florida during the peak of Covid with her husband. This is my first Laura van den Berg, and it won't be my last!

I adored the way she wrote about Florida (being a native Floridian herself she completely nails it) and while I enjoyed the first half of Florida pandemic living -- the weirdness of living off of I-4, and the search to find her sister after she goes missing during a hurricane (but also maybe joins a cult?) the second half was just as great. It's weird, so no spoilers! But I'm assuming that's what you get with a classic van den Berg novel. It's a quick but solid read and A+ for every time she mentions our horrid governor as a Cro-Magnon in a suit.

I'm going to be the odd one out the odd one who was baffled not by what was happening but why it was happening. A post pandemic novel (but what pandemic?) where citizens of Florida have become addicted to the VR technology that disappears them, its clever, to be sure, and the writing is good. So are the atmopherics. That said. it's also a mashup of sci-fi and horror, with other elements as well. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A miss for me but van den Berg's fans and those who enjoy literary/experimental fiction should give it a try.

State of Paradise is an interesting mix of science fiction and literary fiction set in post-pandemic Florida. The weirdness of the book is well done (this is Florida, after all) and keeps the reader engaged. The book wasn't one that particularly worked for me, but I also think I'm not necessarily a good audience for it. I think it will really connect for readers who enjoy twisted and unusual narratives.

Set in a slightly alternate version of post pandemic Florida, this follows a ghostwriter for a famous novelist. When her sister disappears during a violent rainstorm, she must investigate how it may be connected to the rise of a new virtual reality device that seems to be infiltrating all aspects of her life. This plays with reality in really interesting ways. It manages to be fantastically weird yet still rooted in reality. It’s the perfect hybrid of sci-fi and literary fiction that I can’t get enough of lately.

State of Paradise is an unsettling and incredibly well-written foray into the darkest recesses of the mind and our current moment. Told in linked mini-stories, or vignettes, Laura van den Berg brilliantly blurs the lines between reality and unreality. This creates for the reader a foreboding feeling of the uncanny and the accompanying dread and grief that lurks behind each new day of our technologically dependent and increasingly dystopian world. The state of Florida, much as in Lauren Groff's famously titled story collection, is used as metaphor for humankind's aptitude for imposing ourselves onto the natural world -- whether we belong there or not. Laura van den Berg, through her unmatchable prose and skillful storytelling, portrays the similarities between the environment, society, and the self through our collective descent into increasing chaos, confusion, and instability. You don't read this for the warm and fuzzies, but this has truly been one of the best new releases of 2024 and a must-read for anyone who has felt themselves living in a warped simulation post-pandemic.

I received this book as an ARC. I absolutely adored it. I am 100% the exact target reader for this sort of book so I expected to love it. I love Florida lit, I love things that are a little magical realism-esque, I love environmental fiction, I love it when things go a bit haywire and the reader is like WTF. This reminded me of lots of Lauren Groff’s earlier work mixed with the dystopian and swampy atmosphere of Brutes by Dizz Tate.

Where this novel really hit the mark was the way it teetered just beyond the edge of reality. The political extremism, Florida governor, AI, environmental catastrophe and pandemic often feel like the world in which we live today. Just when you forget this is a fictional world something wild happens to remind you this is almost science fiction. You’re constantly trying to decipher what’s escapist and what is commentary on our reality. For me this was most effective in the physical changes following the pandemic, the clever use of the term “ghosts” and The Wilderness.

The only place this novel fell short for me was how close it got to science fiction in the end. That is not my typical genre. However the good things far outweighed that for me.

State of Paradise
Laura van den Berg

A ghost writer moves back to Florida to live with her mother, and her sister next door – the story starts off pretty conventionally, and you can virtually see the cookie-cutter strip malls, laudromats, and typical Florida scenery pass by, feel the heat and humidity. This is my first book by this author, and it is evident that her storytelling is crisp and engaging. In a parallel narrative, the author takes you back to her childhood – dealing with an abusive, alcoholic parent, to her troubled adolescence culminating in her running away from home. Continuing downhill to institutionalization for early adulthood mental health issues. The gradual character development makes you slowly realize that things are not always what they seem. And I think this is a central theme of this novel. To paraphrase: No one is interested in reading about the truth. The truth is what people read to get away from.

Then the story starts to get weird – there is a VR headset townspeople are getting addicted to using, then they start disappearing. There are “ghostly” apparitions of people long-dead or vanished. The famous author the protagonist/narrator takes on a more mysterious and sinister role. Altered reality, parallel universes – sci fi, horror…hang on to your seats!


My appreciation to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher, for providing me with a digital Advanced Reader Copy for review, in exchange for an original, unbiased, independent review.

This is a very odd story. The first person narrator rambles and goes on tangents. There is no conclusion at the end of the novel and the reader is left with a feeling of 'what did I just read'. Each character is a little bit crazy and its hard to root for anyone in particular.

I would call this story sci-fi with the reality traveling and weird body changes.

I'm not sure this novel will take off. It's just weird.