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Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories
Interconnected stories depicting the last years of a WWII bomber pilot, his relationship with his daughter as both child and adult, and his drift into infirmity and death.
When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise A Novel in Stories , whose title is taken from a remote airfield in the American Southwest, and while the father recalls his flying days, his daughter—who nurses the old man—reflects as well.
Pamela Ryder’s stories vary in style and perspective, and time lines overlap as death advances and retreats. This unique and shifting narrative explores the complexities of a relationship in which the father—who has been a high-flying outsider—descends into frailty and becomes dependent upon the daughter he has never really known.
The opening story, “Interment for Yard and Garden,” begins as a simple handbook for Jewish burial and bereavement, although the narrator cannot help but reveal herself and her motives. From there, the telling begins anew and unfolds chronologically, returning to the adult daughter’s a family vacation in France, the grotesqueries of the dinner table, the shadowy sightings of a father who has flown away.
A final journey takes father and daughter back to the Southwest in search of Paradise Field. Their travels through that desolate landscape foreshadow the father’s ultimate decline, as portrayed in the concluding stories that tell of the uneasy transformation in the bond between them and in the transcendence of his demise. Taken together, the stories in Paradise Field are an eloquent but unsparing depiction of infirmity and death, as well as solace and provocation for anyone who has been left to stand graveside and confront eternity.
When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise A Novel in Stories , whose title is taken from a remote airfield in the American Southwest, and while the father recalls his flying days, his daughter—who nurses the old man—reflects as well.
Pamela Ryder’s stories vary in style and perspective, and time lines overlap as death advances and retreats. This unique and shifting narrative explores the complexities of a relationship in which the father—who has been a high-flying outsider—descends into frailty and becomes dependent upon the daughter he has never really known.
The opening story, “Interment for Yard and Garden,” begins as a simple handbook for Jewish burial and bereavement, although the narrator cannot help but reveal herself and her motives. From there, the telling begins anew and unfolds chronologically, returning to the adult daughter’s a family vacation in France, the grotesqueries of the dinner table, the shadowy sightings of a father who has flown away.
A final journey takes father and daughter back to the Southwest in search of Paradise Field. Their travels through that desolate landscape foreshadow the father’s ultimate decline, as portrayed in the concluding stories that tell of the uneasy transformation in the bond between them and in the transcendence of his demise. Taken together, the stories in Paradise Field are an eloquent but unsparing depiction of infirmity and death, as well as solace and provocation for anyone who has been left to stand graveside and confront eternity.
- GenresShort Stories
237 pages, Paperback
Published September 19, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 4, 2021
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It is a beautiful thing, writing, feeling inspired, reading a previously somewhat-avoided book that compels you by its very nature to begin putting your own words on the page well before you’re even close to getting to the end of it. The most likely reason I took my sweet time in first sitting down with this book was my fear of being disappointed. There have been far too many Gordon Lish people who have done that to me, failing in their own hype, or others, and sometimes especially amplified by the Master himself. The flattering blurb on the back of the book quoting Gordon Lish is not the first mark he has made on the books of others, be it students or friends. Lish tends to generally go overboard in his praise and I have found there have been more than a few times he should have toned down his remarks. But the fact that I already held Ryder to a higher station of respect caused me even more trepidation in a fair light that it shouldn't. Adding to my self-inflicted consternation was another peer and fellow Lish School classmate, Peter Markus, recommending I read what he deemed her masterpiece. At least I think that’s what he said. There is never any doubt in my respect for the wisdom of Peter Markus, but it scared me somewhat due to my own rather extravagant personal experience in discovering writers by myself who have, with and by their own words, ensured my undying devotion.
So I eventually began at the beginning, which is where I obsessively always start reading. The rare instance in which I might first look further back in the book, or somewhere in the middle, is in a book such as Nell Dunn’s Talking to Women and my interest focusing on the last interview with the writer Ann Berg. But generally I begin reading where the author probably wanted my journey to begin. So I read her first chapter, which was very good and different from most that its promise held that my mind might by chance be blown. But then I bogged down, lost interest, and unfortunately failed to connect in the longer piece that followed which had its moments but at arm’s length kept me away from the goods. But after taking another short hiatus to gather the necessary verve to continue on I persevered. My need to not fail Markus, and my concern for wanting to properly honor the hard work and emotional pain behind Ryder setting down these words on her page, was my impetus to forge ahead. By the time I got to the chapter titled Mitzvah around the halfway mark, I was hooked. Now, as is typical of me, I wanted to hurry out and purchase the other so-called novel Ryder had previously written titled Correction of Drift. But not so fast I reminded myself. Not so fast. I still had work to do.
I mention both Ryder’s Paradise Field and Correction of Drift as “so-called novels” because their descriptions state her chapters are stand-alone short stories, the same format as my favorite writer of today composes by the name of Claire-Louise Bennett whose first novel was initially called a book of “short stories” titled Pond. Of course, the book was listed as short stories, but I latched early on to the concept that the book was actually a novel, and I did that long before it became recognized as such. Call me prescient if you will, but I recognized Bennett’s genius immediately, enough so that I read Pond four times consecutively. I could not get enough of Claire-Louise Bennett and I wanted more more more. I figured if I kept reading her book again and again I would perhaps drown myself in the most inebriating manner I could have ever devised. Note that on my own I am basically a harmless hunter/gatherer for connecting with certain people, male or female, and the more we can connect the better. For example, it has been so far a fifty-year journey in my continuing mission to peel away the many layers as an onion wrapped around my intimate relationship with a person who at birth was named Beverly Lane. Our love continues to prosper through our already longish union which we hope will eventually result in a veritable accomplishment lasting close to an entire lifetime. Of course, books are different than people, and virtual, but the love I have for them is real even if it exists for only two hundred pages. The chapter titled Mitzvah simply blew me away. Ryder and her wit, her honest expressions of the nursing home her ailing father is held captive in, the typically less-than-adequate care he receives whether due to overworked staff, cutbacks, anger at the system, maintenance issues, disinterest, and resentment of the job some are hired to perform professionally. Ryder is funny in a very sad way because we all know this novel-in-stories is meant to register and record the decline and final days of her aging father. I was present along with Ryder on every page of Mitzvah and hated for it to end.
What is interesting again for me is my lack of any highlighting or lifting of words and phrases I am accustomed to doing with what I find are the most amazing literary works of art. Just as in Bennett’s Pond I have refrained from practicing my usual craft for stealing lines and offering them to my readers to enjoy in the context in which I presumably did. That does not mean Bennett and Ryder don’t write great lines. They do. But they make me want to write my own instead of stealing theirs. Peter Markus remarked to me a few months ago that he was having a hard time finishing his reading of my book Stamped Against the Night as it inspired him to write and not to read. I took that as a meaningful compliment just as I intend to do the same for Ryder and Bennett. But I expect to lift a line or two eventually as they look good between my paragraphs and help to give pause where needed in order to consider whatever thought or criticism I am pursuing.
...There is always someone buzzing up to be buzzed in…
O, the horror of it. You want to identify a Lishian in a moment’s heartbeat? Read a sentence like the one above. Easy to tell the Master had something or other to do with it in either his teaching, editing, or publishing. Not sure what it is called when you use parts of the same word, or revised, twice in the same sentence, but many Lishians do it and I wish that wasn’t the case. But these periodical clever instances of partial repetitions are more than rare in this book, thank goodness. To my knowledge there was only one. For the record I believe Gary Lutz has perfected this literary technique, and has set the bar for its usage, but for me it is a telltale sign for being too much, which results in always becoming too little. I remember a Gordon Lish Fiction Writing class in Bloomington, Indiana back in 1995 or 1996 when Lutz presented a sentence to the class, to Gordon, in which Gordon attempted to revise Lutz’s sentence to read something like “...resorted to his unresortful life.” Lish went on to explain the genius in his revision but I remember reading the same story later in which Lutz’s original sentence stood, resisting the in-class revisions of Lish. But Lutz has gone on to use that method often in his other work. And many others have followed suit. But I didn’t want Pamela Ryder to follow this herd. But she did, damnit. But only once. It is possible that my aversion for this re-tooling on the page with our coveted words has something to do with my writing poetry in which I NEVER repeat a meaningful word, and never would, and abhor anyone else the liberty for violating the sanctity behind this code. Just because Lish demands consecution and swerve, which makes sense, it doesn't mean that using parts of the same word twice in a sentence, though altered, works cleverly for everybody. Ryder is certainly a better writer than this. Now, I am not talking about epizeuxis, or the rhetorical device using the repetition of a word or phrase in immediate succession. I do that as well, and perhaps too often. I just googled what I am attempting to get at here and I came up short. There must be a word for this literary tool or device that has become such a central part of Lutz’s style, a style that I believe was first manically and incessantly introduced effusively by the teacher Gordon Lish. I love repetition and digression, in fact I prefer it, but I obviously hold umbrance for the too-clever tools used on the page. Once affected by this negativity one can spot its use immediately which bridles the joyous freedom of being swept away. I really do hate to mention this point negatively, but I would be remiss if all I did was emit nothing but effusive praise for this wonderful work of Ryder’s and fail to properly criticise when appropriate.
...What rises is the faint smell of rot, a ghostly rush of wind, and the silence of descent...
A few months ago I had the privilege of reading for review an uncorrected proof of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds, a new book written by Peter Markus. In that book was a celebration not only of his father’s life but of his death and what remained of him afterwards. The kindle format was screwed up which did affect my reading, as form specifically matters, especially to me in regards to poetry, which being poetry was how the book was described. Or presented. As poems. Poesies. But the words appeared to me when I read it to be prose. Or one long paragraph. The line breaks and other stylistic manners were absent and it negatively affected this beautiful work of what I would call lyrical prose. Peter then sent me a pdf document which was correctly formatted and it changed everything. It became narrative poetry. Now I am looking forward to reading the finished book when it is finally published. But the thing about the book for me was that I really had never read anything quite so beautiful and heartfelt about the love and respect Peter had for his father and the land and river from which his family came. And because of my reaction to this loving remembrance, Peter intuitively insisted I read Pamela Ryder’s book about the life and death of her own father. I quickly went out and bought a copy of Ryder’s book but resisted reading it as I mentioned at the top of this review for fear of being disappointed. And I am glad I waited. Since purchasing this book my thirty-nine year old stepdaughter has died after a horrendous five-year bout with cancer. Also a daughter-in-law’s grandmother and mother both died, just last week, almost within five minutes of each other and one a continent away; the mother succumbing from Covid and her aging mom most likely from frailty and grief knowing her daughter would probably not make it. So Ryder’s book is in ways topical for me. Timely so to speak. And certainly not disappointing. Beautiful and moving and so very real. Here I have connected again with a person I have never met in the flesh. A virtual relationship far more intimate than I have ever had with many in my own family. Especially my parents. It is the wonder of great literature, of reading and writing, and the promise to be lifted again and again. Emotional love and feelings which are rarely ever exampled, at least to this almost strange degree. A degree even beyond example. Vulnerability. Intimacy. It is what matters in a lifetime whose purpose has come now for me, at all costs, in avoiding regret.
...You tell me, she said. What road are we on? What year is this? And while we’re at it, who’s the President?
Are you nuts? The father said...
It is a beautiful thing, writing, feeling inspired, reading a previously somewhat-avoided book that compels you by its very nature to begin putting your own words on the page well before you’re even close to getting to the end of it. The most likely reason I took my sweet time in first sitting down with this book was my fear of being disappointed. There have been far too many Gordon Lish people who have done that to me, failing in their own hype, or others, and sometimes especially amplified by the Master himself. The flattering blurb on the back of the book quoting Gordon Lish is not the first mark he has made on the books of others, be it students or friends. Lish tends to generally go overboard in his praise and I have found there have been more than a few times he should have toned down his remarks. But the fact that I already held Ryder to a higher station of respect caused me even more trepidation in a fair light that it shouldn't. Adding to my self-inflicted consternation was another peer and fellow Lish School classmate, Peter Markus, recommending I read what he deemed her masterpiece. At least I think that’s what he said. There is never any doubt in my respect for the wisdom of Peter Markus, but it scared me somewhat due to my own rather extravagant personal experience in discovering writers by myself who have, with and by their own words, ensured my undying devotion.
So I eventually began at the beginning, which is where I obsessively always start reading. The rare instance in which I might first look further back in the book, or somewhere in the middle, is in a book such as Nell Dunn’s Talking to Women and my interest focusing on the last interview with the writer Ann Berg. But generally I begin reading where the author probably wanted my journey to begin. So I read her first chapter, which was very good and different from most that its promise held that my mind might by chance be blown. But then I bogged down, lost interest, and unfortunately failed to connect in the longer piece that followed which had its moments but at arm’s length kept me away from the goods. But after taking another short hiatus to gather the necessary verve to continue on I persevered. My need to not fail Markus, and my concern for wanting to properly honor the hard work and emotional pain behind Ryder setting down these words on her page, was my impetus to forge ahead. By the time I got to the chapter titled Mitzvah around the halfway mark, I was hooked. Now, as is typical of me, I wanted to hurry out and purchase the other so-called novel Ryder had previously written titled Correction of Drift. But not so fast I reminded myself. Not so fast. I still had work to do.
I mention both Ryder’s Paradise Field and Correction of Drift as “so-called novels” because their descriptions state her chapters are stand-alone short stories, the same format as my favorite writer of today composes by the name of Claire-Louise Bennett whose first novel was initially called a book of “short stories” titled Pond. Of course, the book was listed as short stories, but I latched early on to the concept that the book was actually a novel, and I did that long before it became recognized as such. Call me prescient if you will, but I recognized Bennett’s genius immediately, enough so that I read Pond four times consecutively. I could not get enough of Claire-Louise Bennett and I wanted more more more. I figured if I kept reading her book again and again I would perhaps drown myself in the most inebriating manner I could have ever devised. Note that on my own I am basically a harmless hunter/gatherer for connecting with certain people, male or female, and the more we can connect the better. For example, it has been so far a fifty-year journey in my continuing mission to peel away the many layers as an onion wrapped around my intimate relationship with a person who at birth was named Beverly Lane. Our love continues to prosper through our already longish union which we hope will eventually result in a veritable accomplishment lasting close to an entire lifetime. Of course, books are different than people, and virtual, but the love I have for them is real even if it exists for only two hundred pages. The chapter titled Mitzvah simply blew me away. Ryder and her wit, her honest expressions of the nursing home her ailing father is held captive in, the typically less-than-adequate care he receives whether due to overworked staff, cutbacks, anger at the system, maintenance issues, disinterest, and resentment of the job some are hired to perform professionally. Ryder is funny in a very sad way because we all know this novel-in-stories is meant to register and record the decline and final days of her aging father. I was present along with Ryder on every page of Mitzvah and hated for it to end.
What is interesting again for me is my lack of any highlighting or lifting of words and phrases I am accustomed to doing with what I find are the most amazing literary works of art. Just as in Bennett’s Pond I have refrained from practicing my usual craft for stealing lines and offering them to my readers to enjoy in the context in which I presumably did. That does not mean Bennett and Ryder don’t write great lines. They do. But they make me want to write my own instead of stealing theirs. Peter Markus remarked to me a few months ago that he was having a hard time finishing his reading of my book Stamped Against the Night as it inspired him to write and not to read. I took that as a meaningful compliment just as I intend to do the same for Ryder and Bennett. But I expect to lift a line or two eventually as they look good between my paragraphs and help to give pause where needed in order to consider whatever thought or criticism I am pursuing.
...There is always someone buzzing up to be buzzed in…
O, the horror of it. You want to identify a Lishian in a moment’s heartbeat? Read a sentence like the one above. Easy to tell the Master had something or other to do with it in either his teaching, editing, or publishing. Not sure what it is called when you use parts of the same word, or revised, twice in the same sentence, but many Lishians do it and I wish that wasn’t the case. But these periodical clever instances of partial repetitions are more than rare in this book, thank goodness. To my knowledge there was only one. For the record I believe Gary Lutz has perfected this literary technique, and has set the bar for its usage, but for me it is a telltale sign for being too much, which results in always becoming too little. I remember a Gordon Lish Fiction Writing class in Bloomington, Indiana back in 1995 or 1996 when Lutz presented a sentence to the class, to Gordon, in which Gordon attempted to revise Lutz’s sentence to read something like “...resorted to his unresortful life.” Lish went on to explain the genius in his revision but I remember reading the same story later in which Lutz’s original sentence stood, resisting the in-class revisions of Lish. But Lutz has gone on to use that method often in his other work. And many others have followed suit. But I didn’t want Pamela Ryder to follow this herd. But she did, damnit. But only once. It is possible that my aversion for this re-tooling on the page with our coveted words has something to do with my writing poetry in which I NEVER repeat a meaningful word, and never would, and abhor anyone else the liberty for violating the sanctity behind this code. Just because Lish demands consecution and swerve, which makes sense, it doesn't mean that using parts of the same word twice in a sentence, though altered, works cleverly for everybody. Ryder is certainly a better writer than this. Now, I am not talking about epizeuxis, or the rhetorical device using the repetition of a word or phrase in immediate succession. I do that as well, and perhaps too often. I just googled what I am attempting to get at here and I came up short. There must be a word for this literary tool or device that has become such a central part of Lutz’s style, a style that I believe was first manically and incessantly introduced effusively by the teacher Gordon Lish. I love repetition and digression, in fact I prefer it, but I obviously hold umbrance for the too-clever tools used on the page. Once affected by this negativity one can spot its use immediately which bridles the joyous freedom of being swept away. I really do hate to mention this point negatively, but I would be remiss if all I did was emit nothing but effusive praise for this wonderful work of Ryder’s and fail to properly criticise when appropriate.
...What rises is the faint smell of rot, a ghostly rush of wind, and the silence of descent...
A few months ago I had the privilege of reading for review an uncorrected proof of When Our Fathers Return to Us as Birds, a new book written by Peter Markus. In that book was a celebration not only of his father’s life but of his death and what remained of him afterwards. The kindle format was screwed up which did affect my reading, as form specifically matters, especially to me in regards to poetry, which being poetry was how the book was described. Or presented. As poems. Poesies. But the words appeared to me when I read it to be prose. Or one long paragraph. The line breaks and other stylistic manners were absent and it negatively affected this beautiful work of what I would call lyrical prose. Peter then sent me a pdf document which was correctly formatted and it changed everything. It became narrative poetry. Now I am looking forward to reading the finished book when it is finally published. But the thing about the book for me was that I really had never read anything quite so beautiful and heartfelt about the love and respect Peter had for his father and the land and river from which his family came. And because of my reaction to this loving remembrance, Peter intuitively insisted I read Pamela Ryder’s book about the life and death of her own father. I quickly went out and bought a copy of Ryder’s book but resisted reading it as I mentioned at the top of this review for fear of being disappointed. And I am glad I waited. Since purchasing this book my thirty-nine year old stepdaughter has died after a horrendous five-year bout with cancer. Also a daughter-in-law’s grandmother and mother both died, just last week, almost within five minutes of each other and one a continent away; the mother succumbing from Covid and her aging mom most likely from frailty and grief knowing her daughter would probably not make it. So Ryder’s book is in ways topical for me. Timely so to speak. And certainly not disappointing. Beautiful and moving and so very real. Here I have connected again with a person I have never met in the flesh. A virtual relationship far more intimate than I have ever had with many in my own family. Especially my parents. It is the wonder of great literature, of reading and writing, and the promise to be lifted again and again. Emotional love and feelings which are rarely ever exampled, at least to this almost strange degree. A degree even beyond example. Vulnerability. Intimacy. It is what matters in a lifetime whose purpose has come now for me, at all costs, in avoiding regret.
...You tell me, she said. What road are we on? What year is this? And while we’re at it, who’s the President?
Are you nuts? The father said...
April 8, 2022
Pamela Ryder is a master of language, and Paradise Field is a masterpiece. The story of family, of a father and daughter, is woven poetically by Ryder without sentimentality. A beautiful and moving book.
February 25, 2019
A daughter cares for her father through the depravations of illness and age, taking the reader to his very graveside and even beyond. These interwoven stores are written with eloquence and unflinching clarity. I came away a sense of both solace and regret.
Truly a Must Read.
Truly a Must Read.
April 23, 2022
I couldn’t help but weep(and at times, laugh) while reading about a daughter caring for her dying father, and one whose absence throughout her childhood makes what is left of their life together all the more complex. Brilliant writing, every page.
Read
October 19, 2019First rate writing
April 9, 2022
An exquisite collection of integrated stories, eloquent and often heart-wrenching. The aging father, and the adult daughter, the unspoken love, guilt, and sharing. A great read for everyone.
March 24, 2018
Read for an MFA workshop at CU Boulder.
This was not a fun read. This was a crazy read – and as I spend most of each day running from my own sort of crazy, I really disliked being forced to sit in someone else’s version of it for several hours. That said – it’s beautifully written and all sorts of poetic.
So, if someone else’s crazy gets your motor going – go for it.
If you have a friend or family member who struggles with military-related PTSD, I’d recommend a hard skip on this one.
This was not a fun read. This was a crazy read – and as I spend most of each day running from my own sort of crazy, I really disliked being forced to sit in someone else’s version of it for several hours. That said – it’s beautifully written and all sorts of poetic.
So, if someone else’s crazy gets your motor going – go for it.
If you have a friend or family member who struggles with military-related PTSD, I’d recommend a hard skip on this one.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews