​State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg

​State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg is a novel about a ghostwriter living in Florida whose sister becomes obsessed with a VR headset called MIND’S EYE. Set at the tail end of a pandemic, the narrator discusses her past episodes then her admittance into a mental hospital, her father’s passing, her runner husband, and her mother unknowingly beginning a cult. It follows the narrator as she experiences strange weather occurrences and then the disappearance of her sister. She believes it has something to do with MIND’S EYE, so she goes into the virtual world which turns out to be a parallel universe where her sister died from the pandemic and she is an author as opposed to a ghostwriter. In the parallel world, they find out that the narrator’s employer is dead and the assistants continue to publish formulaic novels as well as the fact that the creator of MIND’S EYE was close friends to the author the narrator ghostwrites. Her half twin sisters then take her to the bedside of the father in the parallel universe, soon coming upon the idea that all of them should return to the narrator’s world. When they return, the pandemic has started to change people’s bodies and the twins decide to move away, thus being saved from their initial world.
 
van den Berg writes in sharp prose that electrify the weird and strange things that occur in the novel. The narrator’s sister’s eyes continually change color, her belly button becomes a deep tunnel then smooths over, while other body transformations being described in interesting ways. I loved the idea of ghosts (i.e. the narrator being a ghostwriter as well as her father’s ghost talking to her sister through MIND’S EYE) that van den Berg weaves throughout the novel. It’s a climate novel, a pandemic novel, and a novel that uses its surrealness to create moments of tenderness.
 
Final Rating: 5/5