This is Paradise

Will Eaves

Apr. 2012 · Picador

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Family: sometimes heaven, sometimes hell, never what it seems

The Alldens live in a ramshackle house in suburban Bath. Don and Emily have four children: confident Liz, satirical Clive, shy Lotte, and Benjamin, the late arrival. Together they take the usual knocks, go to work, go abroad, go to university, go to pieces. Don and Emily stick it out, their strong marriage tested by experience and frustrated by love for Clive, the ardent boxing fan at odds with himself, their special child.

But then ordinary is special, too, as the Alldens will discover thirty years later when Emily falls ill and her children come home to say goodbye. They meet on the poor outskirts of the city in which they grew up, a place where strangers gather and Emily lingers, present but missing, at the still centre of a changing world.

This Is Paradise is an unflinching portrayal of the dynamics of family life. The Alldens are wholly recognizable and defiantly unique, close allies and closer adversaries who think they know each other. Their unforgettable story is an intimate record of survival that is tender, funny and ultimately heartbreaking.

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Will Eaves was born in Bath in 1967. He is the author of two other novels, The Oversight (2001) and Nothing To Be Afraid Of (2005), and a collection of poems, Sound Houses (2011). For many years he was the arts editor of the Times Literary Supplement. He now teaches at the University of Warwick.