Paradise Park

Rating:
Summary: a review of the reviewers
Review: ...Something deep down inside will be threatened, for one of the messages that Goodman floats to the reader is that goodness and spirituality are messy, and somewhat mysterious. .... Here is a lost soul coming from a fractured home, who is trying to find her way.

Readers critical of her fail to appreciate that, unlike many of them, she has not accepted some conventional formula as to the right way to live. She holds onto her own truth, as muddled and wavering it may be. In this sense, this book, rather than being superficial, is actually very deep, for it portrays how a lost individual finds her way, refusing to sell out to pre-fab spiritual paths and traditions. It points to a truth that is deeper than tradition, as Sharon reaches for a universality through her mystic strivings.

I can understand how those people who thought Goodman was going to be the next Isaac Singer will be angry and dissapointed with her for this novel, but why should she cater to their expectations? Why can't people appreciate it when an author takes risks, for it would have been a lot safer for her to just stick to portraying the Jewish world rather than trying to recreate a hippy milleu as well.

Anyway, I loved the book, and I see Sharon as representative of thousands, perhaps millions of people, who need compassion and understanding rather than judgement and condemnation. ...

Rating:
Summary: A Holden For Our Time
Review: I dutifully read Kaaterskill Falls for my book group, but only out of loyalty to my fellow members. It was so slow and so small, I thought. So I avoided Paradise Park until I saw it in the street for a couple of bucks. Then I remembered how much I had loved what I had read of Allegra Goodman in the New Yorker and I gave her another chance. Besides, Kaaterskill Falls was such a success, so beloved by everyone except me, why should I hold it against her? Why should she write a book especially for me? Well, as it turned out, she did and it's Paradise Park. Goodman got to me in the same way that Salinger captured me in junior high school. I ended up talking like Sharon Spiegelman for a week. Now I have my eighty-five year old mother reading the book. She not only thinks it's really funny (which we'll pay retail for in my family) but she's starting to talk like Sharon too. I am horribly fascinated by all the negative reviews, from critics and customers alike. If America hates Sharon Spiegelman, how do they feel about me? It's truly shaken my confidence. Do I sound self-absorbed? Do I sound like Sharon Spiegelman? Good!

Rating:
Summary: A compelling mess
Review: Paradise Park isn't nearly as acoomplished as Goodman's first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, but it's a fun failure. Kaaterskill Falls was a finely tuned debut with a carefully interwoven group of characters slowly coalescing into a crystaline picture of religious Judaism in the mid 1970s. It was a finely written book. Paradise Park is an all-over-the-place scattershot of a novel that seems forced and unfocused. The meandering plot is tough to put up with -- I had to keep setting the book down and getting back at it when I'd built up more patience. As Sharon, the novel's protagonist and narrator, wanders from one spiritual experience to the next without changing as a character (until the very end), I was left just frustrated.

That said, however, there's still a lot of fun to be had reading this book. So episodic it could almost be a progressive collection of short stories, there's great pleasure to be had in some of this novel's sections. Sharon's life on the periphery of the University of Hawaii and her entanglements with various members of that community are often hilarious and touching. It was interesting to get a taste of the native culture, and Goodman writes about the island's beauty and its native inhabitants with beauty and grace.

Goodman is never able to give Sharon a consistent voice. Eloquent one page and awkward the next, Goodman vacilates between dumbing her narrator down and using her as a conduit for her (Goodman's) own insights. As a result, Sharon is a character we can never get a solid fix on. She keeps coming in and out of focus -- just when we have a feel for her, Goodman lapses back into prose that feels totally alien to Sharon, and we lose track of her again.

So this novel definitely has its pleasures, but as a whole, it's less than satisfying.