The Border of Paradise

by Esmé Weijun Wang

An epic tale of one iconoclastic family's inheritance of madness — and money — in Brooklyn, Taiwan, and Northern California

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame — the sharp-tongued, intelligent Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California’s Polk Valley. As David's health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter.

It’s Daisy's solution for the future of her two children, inspired by the old Chinese tradition of raising girls as sisterly wives for adoptive brothers, that exposes Daisy’s traumatic life, and the terrible inheritance her children must receive. Framed by two suicide attempts, The Border of Paradise is told from multiple perspectives, culminating in heartrending fashion as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune confront their past and their isolation.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mental Health, Literary Fiction, Novels, Book Club, Mental Illness

286 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

About the author

Esmé Weijun Wang is an award-winning mental health advocate and speaker, as well as a journalist and essayist. The Border of Paradise is her first novel. Just announced as the winner of the 2016 Graywolf Press Non-Fiction Prize for her book of essays, The Collected Schizophrenias. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Rene Denfeld · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can I have not read this book yet? It's astonishing. There are reviews that call it disturbing, but that's not my take. But then...look at my life, lol. There's a discussion to be had around what privileged society has decided isn't disturbing, and those books tend to be troubling for their denial of trauma, racism, mental health and more (or else they make violence into entertainment, which I find far more disturbing then a novel like this). Most of our lives are difficult and I think literature like this helps us understand and cope. I loved this book for its lyrical writing, the slow build, and the sense of isolation of the characters as they struggle to know themselves and others. I love the multiple POV and the author pulls it all off with deceptive ease. Love this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mental illness haunts an Asian-American family in this offbeat multi-generational saga. Wang’s debut novel opens in 1968 with David Nowak reporting from the motel room where he plans to kill himself. Succeeding portions of the novel are narrated from other perspectives: David’s wife Jia-Hui, aka Daisy, whom he met in Taiwan; then their son William and his half-sister Gillian. Jia-Hui’s narrative is the most entrancing. Presented as a translation, it includes occasional foreign characters or blank spaces where she couldn’t quite catch what someone was saying in English. Her sections are full of foreboding about the family legacy of madness. I was reminded most of A Reunion of Ghosts and All My Puny Sorrows. Something about this book left a slightly bitter aftertaste for me, but there’s no doubt Wang has fine plotting, character building, and prose skills. I’ll hope to find her next work’s subject more to my liking.

See my full review at Nudge.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This dark and disturbing book examines the way that mental illness can impact an entire family.

It starts with David, a neurotic young boy who inherits his family fortune. As a young adult, David travels to Taiwan and meets a woman at a brothel whom he marries and takes back to America to start a family.

We know from the opening chapter that David commits suicide when his children are still young, and this sets the gothic tone for everything that follows. The effect this has on the rest of their lives is staggering. Left with a mother who suffers from her own form of madness, David's children, William and Gillian, are kept isolated from the world in their rural California home.

In this multi-generational story, we are given alternating first-person sections for each member of the family—plus one of David's old lovers who is also swept into their orbit. What transpires is nothing short of disturbing, with an underlying sense that they are all doomed to tragedy.

It's a potent, complex and exciting debut. After a slow start, it becomes relentlessly gripping once the focus shifts to William and Gillian, culminating in a deeply haunting final section.

[Richard Finkelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know what to say about a book with which I had zero connection. Aesthetics aside, I found most of the characters two dimensional - David, whose psychosis is his defining feature; Daisy - who is equally insane regarding the imposed seclusion of her children; and the children themselves who are an odd combination of intelligent and feral. These characters are all defined by their madness and aside from painting a poetic version of insanity, I am not sure what else the author is trying to convey. I cannot help but think this is an example of people thinking something is meaningful or deep just because it is horrifying and sad.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, that was one of the best books I’ve read but one of the most disturbing and dark too. Wow. I need some time to digest and then I’ll want to talk about it with someone.

[Diletta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ombre lunghissime, nascoste in ogni angolo.
La follia di David, di qualsiasi tipo essa fosse, da qualsiasi cosa fosse stata generata, viene tramandata ed ereditata, è una staffetta ininterrotta di reclusioni e ossessioni, paranoie mutaforma. 
Una forte sensazione di disagio e claustrofobia viene assicurata da efficienti scenari ed eventi che sfiorano il gotico.
La domanda che il lettore dovrà porsi è quand’è che davvero qualcosa si è spezzato, quando è caduta la prima tessera del domino, se è David che ha contagiato tutti con la sua follia o se è semplicemente più facile pensare che sia stato così.

(Qui la recensione:

Il confine del paradiso

)

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure, this author and I share a publisher. With that said, I loved this book. It started a little slow for me but picked up near the middle. By the end, I was staying up late trying to squeeze one more chapter in before bed. Much has been said about the mental illness aspects of the story; the NYT did a good write-up about it. I, instead, want to focus on the sense of isolation that permeates the novel. I've long been a fan of books that separate their characters from the larger world and this is a classic example. Either because of aforementioned mental illness reasons or because of pride or fear or shame (or some combination of all three), the majority of the characters in The Border of Paradise find themselves living semi- or completely reclusive lives. This setting imbues the prose with a satisfying creepy air as well as provides for a more subtle reflection on the hyper-connectivity of contemporary life.

For me, Wang really hit her stride with the character of Gillian. She quickly became the novel's sense of curiosity and foreboding. Her relationship with her parents and her brother, William, was at once idyllic and deeply troubling. I like books that resist good/bad dichotomies. Nobody here can be dismissed or venerated without confronting a big asterisk hanging over their life choices. While the novel's structure of interspersed multiple narrators necessarily occluded some interesting backstory, nothing of great substance was lost. And having the various perspectives probably kept an already isolating story from tilting into straight-up claustrophobia.

Pick up a copy if you like dark family dramas told in beautiful prose.

If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!

[Gemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel lodged in my heart like love, or maybe just an open chest wound. So many books are about good people trying to do their best, but this book is about deeply, deeply flawed people who act out of an unbalanced mix of compassion and selfishness. It's hard to read sometimes. This is a story that leaves shrapnel behind.

But the thing that really makes it so challenging (in a good way!) is that it's impossible to fully sympathize with any of the characters. I loved and hated every single one of them. The reason this is such an effective tragedy is because no one is purely a victim and no one is purely a villain. It hurts to watch because these characters are making the only decisions they're capable of, and all we can do as readers is hate them and understand them at once.

[Dorothy Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am completely heartbroken by this book in all the best and most terrible ways.

[Abc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una storia con personaggi troppo disturbati per i miei gusti e lo dico da persona abituata a leggere di disturbi mentali e famiglie disfunzionali.
Purtroppo in questo romanzo penso che si sia insistito troppo sulla perversione.
Posso comprendere la patologia mentale di David che, quantomeno, è ufficialmente riconosciuta, ma il comportamento di Daisy è ancora più inquietante, pur essendo considerata "sana"!

[Gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this author’s more recent book, The Collected Schizophrenias, and thought I would read this one by her as well. I went into this book with no real expectations as I found The Collected Schizophrenias, to be good, but not great. The Border of Paradise blew me away! The author has a beautiful writing style, and the story was surprising, engaging, disturbing, and shockingly realistic, all at once. The author has and portrays a keen perspective on mental illness, personalities, and relationships; the story also tackles the effects of trauma and the intricacies of family dynamics (both healthy and very, very damaging). Highly recommend. 9.5/10

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

A horrifying look at the effects of isolation and loneliness on an already vulnerable family.

This novel made me feel so claustrophobic, my chest one tight knot of anxiety, that I took a break of a few days for less emotionally involved reads. Disturbing and worthwhile but triggers abound here so tread carefully.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing and some of the scenes were beautifully done but overall the story (and many of the main characters' actions) didnt make any sense to me.
2.5*

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

My god. Never have I read a novel so subtly horrifying and intensely unnerving. I can still feel myself mentally shuddering, as if something intrusive had burrowed itself underneath my skin. This book is deeply, deeply unsettling.

If I could pick three words to characterize or define this book I’d choose: Anguish. Isolation. Claustrophobic. I admit, when I scanned the summary of this novel I was doubtful and dismissive. But that’s because I realize now that it’s the bare bones of what this tale spans and although true seems inaccurate. Mental illness, trauma, and grief plague the Nowak family in this multi-generational novel. Some readers may find it slow and without a plot and they’re not wrong. It’s a pervasive study of the most horrid and pitiful people you can imagine.

This book invoked similar feelings I had while reading East of Eden and Wuthering Heights but if you asked me why or how, I would have no answer. There’s a sense of timelessness with the writing here: a cold and decaying house, a gut-wrenching forbidden relationship, and a near-apocalyptic fire. Yet Wang adds her own touch that transforms this into gold (if gold was dark and disturbing that is).

I was unsure with my rating because while THE BORDER OF PARADISE utterly impressed me, I couldn’t help but feel f***ing terrified in my entire reading experience.

[Lina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not too long ago, my friend Carrie Lou and I discussed how we don't always want to know the author personally when we're reading their books, preferring to maintain a distance between art and the artist. I have to make an exception for Esmé Weijun Wang, who I've known since we were teenagers. We shared some intimate moments together, which cannot be replicated in most adult friendships I have in my life. Reading her debut novel within a few days made me feel close to her, loving the way her prose flows and the way her imagination transgresses our comfort zones. The novel is not for the faint-hearted and may be psychologically triggering for some readers, but it is not bleak at all. It is exquisite. A must read.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just... WOW! I read it slowly, I never read books slowly. But something about the writing and the style just made me slow down, I reread passages several times. I've read the same book 3x in a row before but I've never taken the time I did on a first reading the way I did here. There is so much here and its provocative and beautiful and terrible and sad and incredibly well written. Great story, great book. Even the cover art is amazing.

[Jody Sperling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relentless. Hard. On the border of too much.

[Hailey Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot come up with any words to describe this book. Only “😦”

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the most disturbing and emotionally evocative books I've ever read. I tend to gravitate toward books that make me feel a lot of things, so the fact that I found this book particularly disturbing speaks to its emotional honesty and rawness, I think. I don't want to spoil too much, but the disturbing parts weren't just the objective plot points I mean, incest is always gross, right? but the feeling of being ensconced in hell, of being literally and mentally trapped... it's terrifying.

Overall this is a really fascinating portrait of severe mental illness and its ramifications not just to the lone individual, but to family members and other loved ones involved with them. There are a few really heart-wrenching paragraphs from various characters detailing what it's like to love someone knowing that they can't be in your life, or that you can't have them, for whatever reason...

Basically if you like to feel things, this book is great for that. Make sure to keep a palate cleanser on hand when you need to take a break, like a bite of mint ice cream.

[Fromlake · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Il mio progetto è vivere finché non muoio.”

Mi sono avvicinato a questo libro, pubblicato da Lindau nel 2018 nella bellissima collana Contemporanea, perché sono sempre incuriosito dal successo di un’opera prima di uno scrittore. E questo nonostante io non prediliga le tematiche legate alle malattie mentali ed alle situazioni borderline. Ma forse, dopo l’avvento del COVID-19, anche la definizione di ciò che è borderline andrebbe rivista...

Il romanzo narra di una famiglia della borghesia americana, i Nowak, il cui figlio David è affetto da una malattia mentale. La sua condizione, destinata a peggiorare nel tempo, finirà inevitabilmente per travolgere la propria vita e quella delle persone a lui vicine.

A differenza di altri libri sul medesimo tema, qui l’autrice riesce a farci vivere il disagio psichico di David dall’interno, come espressione di un modo di vivere “naturale”, senza alternative. E questo vale anche per altre situazioni di “ordinario disagio” che i personaggi del libro si trovano ad affrontare, come l’appartenenza ad una minoranza culturale ed etnica. La loro risposta è l’isolamento dalla comunità, finendo per vivere una vita senza contatti e stimoli dall’esterno, così che quando un personaggio ad un certo punto dice: “Il mio progetto è vivere finché non muoio”, ti sembra un’affermazione normale, quasi banale.

In questa situazione “straordinaria” di disagio diffuso (psichico e non solo) che coinvolge più generazioni, la vita scorre come in una dimensione parallela. Come recita la citazione all’inizio del libro:

“Una prigione diventa casa se possiedi la chiave”.

In questa dimensione parallela i protagonisti si trovano ad affrontare le difficoltà “ordinarie” di tutti i giorni: problemi familiari, amori, omofobia, maschilismo.

“È difficile essere una ragazza perché le ragazze hanno dei desideri, ma non il potere di realizzarli”.

Con il procedere della lettura il confine tra “pazzia” e “normalità” si fa sempre più labile, fino ai colpi di scena finali.

Una lettura molto interessante e appagante, a tratti forse un po’ troppo cruda e con un finale che ti tiene incollato alla pagina.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book is about entitled jerks, being trapped in an isolation of your own making, of someone else's making. It is a dark story of family trauma and sickness and abuse, decades long. I do enjoy these kind of multi-generational stories - like Eugenides' Middlesex, with which The Border of Paradise shares some themes? feelings? if not overall tone, which is even darker here, and very claustrophobic. I am glad the book switched between perspectives, because illness and upbringing or no, David Novak and his son are giant jerks and I didn't want to be stuck in their heads for long. Daisy less so - her past is never quite made explicit, but this character really shows a very believable and understandable fall, step by step, into utter isolation and ultimately extreme behaviour. I felt so very trapped with Gillian. By that point, the switch to the children, I couldn't put the book down and read straight through to the end, trapped in this suffocating house with them. I loved the passage where Daisy likens her husband's illness to a wild, bucking horse beneath him. I struggled, sometimes, with the descriptions of suicide and self-harm, but honestly even more so with how frankly the man spoke about being entitled to the women, how often the thought of violence crossed their minds. For me that seems a darker, more disturbing place than any suicide. My favourite character, the strongest and best, the hero, was Sarah.

[غبار · Rating 2 out of 5]

the perspective-shifting form of an multi-generational family chronicle allows wang to chart the destructive effects of one man’s mental illness on the women he uses as emotional crutches, and on his offspring (larkin’s “they fuck you up, your mum and dad” comes to mind), but there was something outsized, desperate, bleak, gothic about the events of the plot (suicide, sibling incest, parental abuse, sexual violence, a forest fire and more) that i found deeply unconvincing. i also felt like the white male gaze through which david fetishises and exoticises jia-hui - and later blames her for not assimilating well enough / speaking chinese to their children - was not problematised enough, and that to me was quite troubling.

[LoKat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh. I'm not really sure what to think on this one. On the one hand, the writing is beautiful - the claustrophobia and isolation feels very real and suffocating. On the other hand, I felt like I couldn't really get a handle on any of the characters. It's as thought every character is presented as an enigma, and their POV section is supposed to make you understand them more, but it never did. I still feel completely in the dark about so many of the characters' actions. Yes, it is a disturbing book, because it deals with disturbing subject matter, but I'd say I found it more frustrating than anything else. It did make me do some idle researching on tongyangxi though, and the Westermarck Effect, which was pretty interesting.

[Mike]

This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. Beautifully written, full of devastating little truths, and with an ending that continues to haunt me, months later. Though the lives of the family depicted in this book are unsettling and often dark, there are moments of grace throughout, as well. I struggle to come up with something tidy that can sum up with this book is "about," but if I had to say, I'd say it's about family, and how we both are and are not defined by the traumas in our lives, and how experiences can resound down through generations. Fantastic book, I highly recommend it.

[Christy Goldsmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just...don’t know. I don’t even know how to rate this one. Five stars for writing skill and 2.5(?) stars for the story that’s too heavy, too full of trauma, and too lacking in any redemption. I don’t even know if I can write a real review. But I did want to see how it ended, so 🤷🏼‍♀️.

[Elke Calhoun · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was nuts. from start to finish legit cray cray. but well written. read at your own peril tho

[XD · Rating 5 out of 5]

FUCk. THIS FUCKING ASKDGKJDSG DOSAJG BOOK

[Molly Sutter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonderful writing, severely messed up story. Sometimes ugly can be beautiful, but not this time.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! Pretty disturbing book but well written.

[Mariaelena Di Gennaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In seguito chiamai quella cosa innominabile "vitafobia", nel tentativo mal riuscito di comprendere l'orrore rappresentato dalle nevrosi: la paura di tutto si trasformò nella paura stessa di essere vivo".

Quante forme può assumere la malattia mentale? Quali effetti causa non solo nel malato, ma anche in chi gli sta intorno? Sono solo alcune delle domande che mi sono posta durante la lettura di questo romanzo che mi ha molto turbato. Esmé Wang costruisce un racconto denso e avvolgente che, dopo una prima parte piuttosto lenta, si fa claustrofobico e angosciante man mano che la spirale di follia e disagio che ammanta la narrazione diventa sempre più lampante. Questo libro racchiude un po' anche la storia della stessa autrice che, proprio come David Nowak, il protagonista del romanzo, lotta da sempre contro le nevrosi e contro un costante, disperato senso di inadeguatezza che porta a considerarsi addirittura inadatti alla vita. David infatti è affetto da un disturbo mentale al quale solo il tenero, adolescenziale amore per la bella Marianne sembra riuscire a porre un freno, un amore sfortunato che però segna per lui il punto di non ritorno. Sposerà una donna taiwanese (ecco di nuovo una nota autobiografica inserita dalla Wang) da lui "ribattezzata" Daisy, personaggio enigmatico attraverso il quale l'autrice affronta il tema dell'emigrazione e dello straniamento legato all'abbandono della propria terra e all'arrivo in un Paese nel quale ci si sente sempre ospiti e mai davvero a casa. Il disagio e la malattia di David trovano terreno fertile in questo matrimonio che spesso vive di silenzi e di una dolorosa incomunicabilità dovuta anche alla diversa lingua e cultura di Daisy e che avrà il suo apice con la nascita dei figli William e Gillian, condannati ad una vita di isolamento, chiusi in una casa tra i boschi, lontani da quella società che agli occhi dei loro genitori è sempre stata solo un pericolo. La follia di David sembra propagarsi nelle vite dei suoi figli ai quali sono dedicate le pagine più torbide, dolorose e disturbanti, quelle che ho trovato davvero sconvolgenti. Per me è stata una lettura non facile, un buonissimo esordio al quale vi consiglio di dare una possibilità.