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The Paradise Engine
While working to restore an historic theatre in a seedy part of the city, a graduate student named Anthea searches to find her best friend, lost to the rhetoric of an itinerant street mystic. Almost a century earlier, Liam, a tenth-rate tenor, visits the same theatre while eking out a career on the dying Vaudeville circuits of the day. In both eras, an apocalyptic strain of mysticism threatens their existence: Anthea contends with a nascent New Age movement in the heart of the city while Liam encounters a radical theosophical commune along the coast of British Columbia, who appear to be building ... something.
"The Paradise Engine" unfolds across a colourful backdrop of labour organizers, immaculately-attired cultists, ambitious socialites, basement offices and coffee shops. Its cast of characters and historical setting recalls Robertson Davies' "Fifth Business" or Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day," while its approach to memory and community is reminiscent of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami.
"The Paradise Engine" unfolds across a colourful backdrop of labour organizers, immaculately-attired cultists, ambitious socialites, basement offices and coffee shops. Its cast of characters and historical setting recalls Robertson Davies' "Fifth Business" or Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day," while its approach to memory and community is reminiscent of "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
268 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2013
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87 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 3, 2013
This book is mysterious and thought-provoking and beautifully written.
It moves between the present-day story of Anthea, a graduate student trying to unravel the mystery of her best friend's disappearance and the story of Liam Manley, a struggling tenor touring the Vaudeville circuit almost a century earlier.
The book does not follow what one would call a linear track per se, but a plot does unfold. Questions are asked and answered (or not, as appropriate) and characters develop and change. The narration moves around in time, through memories of Anthea's earlier friendship with her best friend, Jasmine, and her grandmother's death to Liam's experience in the war and his decade spent as a tenor with Mrs. Kilgour, the coal baroness Anthea is researching in the present day.
My favourite story-line was Liam's both because of the incredible historical detail and because he is such a strong character. His neurosis and illness and attempts to overcome his poverty and answer his dream of being a lauded singer and a gentlemen, superior to all others, are so clearly drawn. Campbell manages to cast this somewhat unlikeable guy in a manner which draws out compassion.
But Anthea is also captivating in her way, with her squirrels in the attic and her seemingly discordant disrespect for archival materials. She seems torn between her verging-on-obsession attempt to understand Jasmine's disappearance as it relates to the other story-line and deal with her own part in it (ie. addressing her "haunting") and the effort of doing her job.
Her character is clear enough, I felt, without the forced dialogue often phrased in questions or delivered haltingly, as if she couldn't clearly get a thought out (ie. "No. Yeah. But. Do you want to go for tea?"). In fact, I felt it took away from Anthea's character in that she didn't strike me as being as insecure as her speech would suggest. The only time I didn't like her was when she spoke out loud, and this is repeated with her father's speech style.
But I want to make clear that apart from this and a couple other minor confusions in motivation which could perhaps be cleared up by a second read (which the complexity of this novel deserves), I found this novel a fascinating and compelling read.
And the writing, oh, the writing. Detailed and vivid and simply beautiful. Like this: "...Anthea went out onto the deck and looked across the inlet toward the airport. She looked down at the water under moonlight and though how much deeper it seemed at night. When she slept, she dreamed about all the submerged geographies, and the creatures that lived among them, about whales and octopus, the jellyfish blooms they saw in summer, and phosphorescent algae, and the deeper, colder places they could not see, valleys and plains that stretched out beneath the water, and far away to the west whole mountain ranges sunk in the dark parts of the ocean."
I can't wait to read what Rebecca Campbell writes next.
It moves between the present-day story of Anthea, a graduate student trying to unravel the mystery of her best friend's disappearance and the story of Liam Manley, a struggling tenor touring the Vaudeville circuit almost a century earlier.
The book does not follow what one would call a linear track per se, but a plot does unfold. Questions are asked and answered (or not, as appropriate) and characters develop and change. The narration moves around in time, through memories of Anthea's earlier friendship with her best friend, Jasmine, and her grandmother's death to Liam's experience in the war and his decade spent as a tenor with Mrs. Kilgour, the coal baroness Anthea is researching in the present day.
My favourite story-line was Liam's both because of the incredible historical detail and because he is such a strong character. His neurosis and illness and attempts to overcome his poverty and answer his dream of being a lauded singer and a gentlemen, superior to all others, are so clearly drawn. Campbell manages to cast this somewhat unlikeable guy in a manner which draws out compassion.
But Anthea is also captivating in her way, with her squirrels in the attic and her seemingly discordant disrespect for archival materials. She seems torn between her verging-on-obsession attempt to understand Jasmine's disappearance as it relates to the other story-line and deal with her own part in it (ie. addressing her "haunting") and the effort of doing her job.
Her character is clear enough, I felt, without the forced dialogue often phrased in questions or delivered haltingly, as if she couldn't clearly get a thought out (ie. "No. Yeah. But. Do you want to go for tea?"). In fact, I felt it took away from Anthea's character in that she didn't strike me as being as insecure as her speech would suggest. The only time I didn't like her was when she spoke out loud, and this is repeated with her father's speech style.
But I want to make clear that apart from this and a couple other minor confusions in motivation which could perhaps be cleared up by a second read (which the complexity of this novel deserves), I found this novel a fascinating and compelling read.
And the writing, oh, the writing. Detailed and vivid and simply beautiful. Like this: "...Anthea went out onto the deck and looked across the inlet toward the airport. She looked down at the water under moonlight and though how much deeper it seemed at night. When she slept, she dreamed about all the submerged geographies, and the creatures that lived among them, about whales and octopus, the jellyfish blooms they saw in summer, and phosphorescent algae, and the deeper, colder places they could not see, valleys and plains that stretched out beneath the water, and far away to the west whole mountain ranges sunk in the dark parts of the ocean."
I can't wait to read what Rebecca Campbell writes next.
July 17, 2013
We are all trying to seek something better or some sort of perfection. But are the roads we take to achieve that goal the right ones for us to take? Rebecca Campbell explores that concept in her novel The Paradise Engine.
Page 11-12
On the bus Anthea took a window seat and watched for a Caucasian male, apprx. 30 yrs of age. There were lots standing on street corners, some were barefoot, some in worn denim with long hair. She was halfway to campus and worried about making her meeting when the express stopped at an intersection and there he was, crossing in front of the bus. He was attended by a blonde woman - not Jasmine, though for a moment Anthea's stomach tightened. He carried no backpack, but a drum hung over his left hip. His hair was longer, blonder at the tips, the curls more luxuriant than they had been in the spring. He was shirtless and barefoot. She pressed the button on the bar beside her once, then twice, then went for the door.
"Please could you let me out here?" she asked. "Just here?"
The bus driver said nothing.
"Please!" she said. "It's a red!"
As she said it the light turned to green. The bus was in the intersection. "Please!" she said.
"Ma'am," said the bus driver, "this is an express!"
Anthea walked away from the door, down the crowded aisle and up the steps to the back window. She looked toward the street he had crossed, attended by another of his blonde sylphs. The window was dirty. What she could see of the intersection was hidden by construction, by other cars, by the slope of the street down which they drove.
my complete review
Page 11-12
On the bus Anthea took a window seat and watched for a Caucasian male, apprx. 30 yrs of age. There were lots standing on street corners, some were barefoot, some in worn denim with long hair. She was halfway to campus and worried about making her meeting when the express stopped at an intersection and there he was, crossing in front of the bus. He was attended by a blonde woman - not Jasmine, though for a moment Anthea's stomach tightened. He carried no backpack, but a drum hung over his left hip. His hair was longer, blonder at the tips, the curls more luxuriant than they had been in the spring. He was shirtless and barefoot. She pressed the button on the bar beside her once, then twice, then went for the door.
"Please could you let me out here?" she asked. "Just here?"
The bus driver said nothing.
"Please!" she said. "It's a red!"
As she said it the light turned to green. The bus was in the intersection. "Please!" she said.
"Ma'am," said the bus driver, "this is an express!"
Anthea walked away from the door, down the crowded aisle and up the steps to the back window. She looked toward the street he had crossed, attended by another of his blonde sylphs. The window was dirty. What she could see of the intersection was hidden by construction, by other cars, by the slope of the street down which they drove.
my complete review
August 23, 2017
First novel by a promising author. Locals will enjoy the blend of BC history (the province populated by weirdos since 1857) and scenery. My favourite parts are not the intertwined stories of post-WWI angst and pre-apocalyptic Vancouver, but the relationship between the protagonist and her father.
Much better than either After Alice or Extensions (see below), but utimately unsatisfying.
From my review of Extensions:
This is one of four new releases from NeWest Press that I won in a silent auction. This book, like two others (After Alice and The Paradise Engine), is a first novel by a woman writer based in and about BC.
It seems like all three authors went to the same how-to-write-a-novel workshop, which included the ideas of a multigenerational family, dark secrets revealed by archival material, and a female protagonist with a highly distinctive name. And the latter because it's the only way to distinguish her from the other, somewhat one-dimensional characters.
Much better than either After Alice or Extensions (see below), but utimately unsatisfying.
From my review of Extensions:
This is one of four new releases from NeWest Press that I won in a silent auction. This book, like two others (After Alice and The Paradise Engine), is a first novel by a woman writer based in and about BC.
It seems like all three authors went to the same how-to-write-a-novel workshop, which included the ideas of a multigenerational family, dark secrets revealed by archival material, and a female protagonist with a highly distinctive name. And the latter because it's the only way to distinguish her from the other, somewhat one-dimensional characters.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews