Paradise City

October 26, 2015
Journalist and author Day (Home Fires) connects the lives of four Londoners in this tale of grief, hardship, and hope. Sir Howard Pink is a multimillionaire who rose from humble origins but has since lost his way after the disappearance of his 19-year-old daughter, Ada. Beatrice Kizza is one of his maids, a refugee from Uganda. Esme Reade is a young reporter at a weekly paper who has not yet lost her empathy for her subjects and is assigned to interview Howard. And Carol Hetherington is a widow, slowly learning to live her life without her husband Derek, who makes a discovery that inextricably binds her to Howard. The ways in which Day brings this ensemble together is both surprising and rewarding. Through standout prose, including some brilliant imagery, she uses her characters and situations to describe a London that reveals “all its grubby glamor, all its twisted secrets and oozing promise of possibility.”