Children of Paradise

by Camilla Grudova

When Holly applies for a job at the Paradise - one of the city's oldest cinemas, squashed into the ground floor of a block of flats - she thinks it will be like any other shift work. She cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, avoids the belligerent old owner, Iris, and is ignored by her aloof but tight-knit colleagues who seem as much a part of the building as its fraying carpets and endless dirt. Dreadful, lonely weeks pass while she longs for their approval, a silent voyeur. So when she finally gains the trust of this cryptic band of oddballs, Holly transforms from silent drudge to rebellious insider and gradually she too becomes part of the Paradise - unearthing its secrets, learning its history and haunting its corridors after hours with the other ushers. It is no surprise when violence strikes, tempers change and the group, eyes still affixed to the screen, starts to rapidly go awry...

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Adult, Historical Fiction

200 pages, Hardcover

First published July 7, 2022

About the author

Camilla Grudova lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She holds a degree in art history and German from McGill University, Montreal. Her fiction has appeared in the White Review and Granta.

Grudova originally posted stories on her Tumblr blog before being spotted by an editor from The White Review.

Her story, "Waxy" (Granta 136), was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for short fiction and won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novelette.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Children of Paradise is Camilla Grudova's foray into the novel form, a follow up to her evocative story collection, The Doll's Alphabet. A surface reading yields a readable and raunchy tale of mostly young adults who work in an Edinburgh-based movie theater. The theater transitions from private to corporate ownership midway through. There's not much more to the plot, but I don't really read this as a plot-focused book. Instead, it's a work that plays with reader expectations and makes some interesting comments on taste, audience, and perspective. It's a book about film, but it is told from the perspective of workers in a cinema, not filmgoers or critics, a choice that highlights a subtle class commentary running throughout. The story is also told with an eye for filthy details, evoking a sense of disgust as we cross the bounds of good taste and expectations of literary fiction. Bodily fluids, adulterated food, and a general sense of uncleanliness permeate the work. It's also quite intertextual, largely eschewing literary references for film references - another inversion of what we expect from literary fiction. The result is an intriguing mix of palettes and tones, social commentary and literary inversion. It's a book that can divide opinions, our reactions laying bare our sense of taste and our own expectations about what fiction should do.

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Known for her unnerving short-story collection The Doll’s Alphabet, this is Camilla Grudova’s debut novella. Grudova draws from her experiences after she left Canada for Scotland. Settled in Edinburgh, she worked as an usherette at the Cameo, an indie cinema later gobbled up by a large, money-grubbing corporation. From the nod to Marcel Carné in the title, onwards, this is saturated in film and film history, overflowing with references to classic movies and actors. It’s narrated by Holly who, like Grudova, loves clowns and Chaplin. Holly takes a job at the Paradise cinema, once shiny and glorious, it’s now dilapidated and struggling. At first Holly’s snubbed by the rest of the staff but soon becomes part of their cultish. misfit band, spending her days and nights in their company. They scour the aisles for discarded money and drugs, and set up their own, after-hours film shows. They endure the sordid antics of customers, cleaning up the various bodily fluids that routinely coat the seats, unclogging the overflowing toilets and scouring the rat-infested, popcorn machine. Together they form a kind of society in miniature, away from the wider world, like the children in Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles or the characters in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers; subject only to the whims of manager Sally who seems to have stepped out of a frame from Sunset Boulevard. They live on minimum wage, scrounging and hustling to stay afloat but when the owner of the Paradise suddenly dies and the Paradise is taken over by a soulless chain, it becomes clear their sordid, shabbily-decadent existence was an idyll, a time of lost, fragile pleasures.

Grudova’s piece is atmospheric and unsettling, with a slightly gothic tinge, perhaps why she’s been compared to authors like Angela Carter. Her story’s richly detailed, highly visual in quality, unfolding in a leisurely yet gripping manner, gradually moving into slightly surreal, nightmarish territory, making me wonder if she’s also been influenced by writers like Bruno Schulz. The cinema itself is a major character here: its faded but extravagant interior housing a haunted, sinister space, rather like the ballet school in Argento’s Suspiria or The Overlook Hotel in The Shining. A place that bears the traces and scars of terrible events and hints at more to come. A fascinating story and an impressive take on contemporary capitalism and conformity. Although there are points when this falters, it still completely captured my attention from start to finish.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Atlantic Books

[Sujoya - theoverbookedbibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

*LONGLISTED for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction*

3.5⭐️


“Picture houses are built for dreams, lies and fantasies. The plaster creatures clinging to the walls and ceilings, the fairground effect of all those lights and mirrors can only be accessory to the wildest illusions, the grandest, most unrealistic seductions.”

Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova follows our narrator Holly (not her real name ) through her stint as an usherette in an old and dilapidated single-screen independent movie theatre “The Paradise” described as “a Frankenstein’s monster of a place” with trapdoors leading into the sewers, hidden doors and an eerie, mysterious vibe. The Paradise screens modern money makers as well as classic cinema, serving popcorn and snacks and equipped with a bar (the snacks et al, as Sally the Manager points out, is a main source of their revenue). Initially, Holly, who is new to the unnamed city, feels isolated from her coworkers and it takes a while for her to be accepted into their fold. Eventually, she becomes a part of the group, joins them in their late-night screenings and house parties, shares drugs they pilfer from what is left behind by their customers and also indulges in a torrid affair with a coworker. In other words, her life is defined by her association with The Paradise and her coworkers – a family of poorly paid movie-loving people - and she seems to settle into a rhythm that is disrupted when the theatre is sold to a corporate bigwig after the eccentric owner Iris (with whom Holly has quite a few interesting interactions) passes on. The changes are unwelcome, the employees are resentful and fearful of losing their jobs and the cinema is gradually being transformed – in more ways than one.

Camilla Grudova excels at world-building. Each chapter begins with the name of a film, which I found interesting, as is the fact that the title of the book is also taken from a classic French film. The story pays homage to classic cinema and independent theatres and how the movie-going experience has changed over time. I won’t say that any of the characters are particularly likable or interesting but her characterizations read like caricatures - from the glamorous manager Sally, and the eccentric owner Iris, to the quirky employees and the new assistant manager Andrew. The author uses vivid imagery in describing the old building complete with rather disgustingly detailed descriptions of the interiors and the day-to-day cleanup and maintenance, which is off-putting. An element of satire is introduced into the narrative as we follow the gradual phasing out of the old cinema as it becomes a part of a popular profit-centered corporate chain. Overall this novella is an immersive read with a Gothic feel, elements of surrealism and satire that turns dark and disturbing as the story progresses. An intense read that left me more than a tad unsettled. Not quite an enjoyable read for me personally, but definitely compelling and memorable.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Children of Paradise, a novel about a young woman working in a singularly weird cinema, Holly’s coworkers try to woo her with a bizarre cocktail: ‘Crème de Violette with lemonade, a pickled egg and a maraschino cherry’. The book is like the drink – kind of disgusting, wildly intriguing, and ideally downed in one. It’s one of those stories that has an enveloping ambience; it pulls you down into the world of the Paradise, which seems to exist a little outside time, outside geography. A haunting, offbeat coming-of-age story, The Electric meets Girls Against God.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Paula Mota]

DNF @50%

And the winner of the most disgusting book on the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 is...

O Paradise é um cinema com cheiro a bolor, construído durante a Primeira Guerra Mundial, onde passam os últimos sucessos mas também clássicos. Nele trabalha, como não podia deixar de ser, uma galeria de aves raras, cada funcionário a tentar ser mais bizarro do que o outro, num livro que vive praticamente das interações entre eles e dos filmes que vêem quando a sala fecha ou vão para casa de algum deles, enquanto se drogam com o que encontram no chão ou no WC do cinema e comem aperitivos que já não podem ser vendidos por estarem foram do prazo.

No one would hire Paolo here with his English – he was half starving and sleeping in hostels when Sally found him lurking in the lobby. He told me in Italy he has a criminal record, he assaulted someone with a knife, I think. This was the first job Flynn has ever had – he got it right after being kicked out of drama school – and Lydia looks like she sacrifices lambs to Satan in her spare time. Patricia is lazy, and god knows where Otto comes from.’

Não há nada de entusiasmante em “Children of Paradise”, mas as referências cinematográficas mantinham a leitura em andamento apesar da falta de rumo.

We watched unpopular films, tacky films, forgotten films on the screen: Road House, The Lawnmower Man, Trancers, Beetlejuice, Return to Oz, anything with River Phoenix in it (who they all seemed to worship and who Flynn resembled), shorts from Cosmo’s collection, Alien, which looked wonderfully visceral on actual film, like a fresh tattoo.

O meu verdadeiro problema com este livro é basicamente fisiológico. Spoilers: este livro fede, literária e literalmente.
Ao tomar o pequeno-almoço, leio: Spilled popcorn, contraband glass bottles of wine, champagne and beer that people snuck in, candy bar wrappings, banana peels, strangely heavy Pepsi cups which turned out to be filled with vomit or shit, sunglasses, umbrellas and, occasionally, toenails and semen, feathers even.

Logo a seguir ao almoço, leio: Like doctors, we knew the intimate details of every customer’s bathroom habits. Patricia showed me a slyly taken photo of a man who came in once a month and took a shit the size and shape of a small watermelon which clogged the toilet for days.

Ao fazer o jantar, ouço: I grabbed a half-empty cardboard popcorn box out of the trash bag at our feet to catch his semen as I pulled myself away, and held it over his dick. The semen would’ve been obvious on the chairs, the floor and our black clothes – I had found it plenty of times from customers.

Graças a Camilla Grudova, uma ida ao cinema não voltará a ser a mesma coisa.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a crazy ride. Holly gets a job in an old cinema in Scotland (I think). It's falling apart, and is staffed by a band of wonderful misfits. For a long while there isn't really a story, just a series of vignettes about the terrible things that customers do in the dark of the cinema or leave behind for the staff to clear up, until Holly's colleagues realise she is going to stay and let her in on their 'secret society' of film watching, drug taking and stealing. Things get progressively worse and worse in a brilliant way. Expect a great deal of bodily fluids.
I listened to the audio book and although the narrator read it well, I was very confused for a long time about when and where it was set and what nationality Holly is, until I realised that she is probably Canadian even though she isn't read in a Canadian accent, and the novel is set more or less in the present day in Scotland.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot say that I am a film buff as I have a lot of gaping holes in my film repertoire but I can say I do enjoy the medium and I was quite excited to read a book about it. Just as another note, I read Camilla Grudova’s short story collection, The Doll’s Alphabet and I enjoyed that tremendously and I was hoping that a debut novel would live up to the weirdness of those stories.

The narrator applies to work in a run down, rat infested cinema and she meets a group of eccentric movie lovers. All whom she bonds with, in more ways than one. Trouble hits though when the owner dies and the cinema goes under new management with an emphasis on screening blockbusters and firing staff. Things don’t always work out and the section of the book goes into a weird direction.

Each chapter is named after a film and there are some elements of the movie in the chapter, sometimes it is blatant and sometimes it’s subtle. It does help of one knows movies in order to read the book but it’s not essential.

The book itself structured like a film. The first part reminded something out of John Hughes, naïve and setting the scene, the mid part some seedy flick but with a carefree feel, to a certain extent I’d say Cinema Paradiso and the last part has Dario Argento vibes all over it. It also reminded of an unleashed Ottessa Moshfegh.

Children of Paradise also functions as a commentary about the direction cinema is going. Whereas in the past cinema was risqué, now the market is dominated by superhero films and sequels and rehashes of classics.

I thought the novel was fantastic. I laughed and shuddered in revulsion over the last bit but it is a fun book that has a breezy feel to it. It is also essential reading if you are a movie lover or ever worked in a cinema. I admit it’s also fun trying to guess the correlation between the chapter and the film mentioned in it.

I can’t help wondering what direction Camilla Grudova will take in her next work. Secretly I am hoping it will be a more horror one as she can describe gruesome happenings excellently. I know it’s not fair as the book is relatively new but the last section was written so well, I hope she does take it further.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Paradise is an ancient cinema, now well past its prime, situated in an unnamed city in an unnamed country:

It was built on the ground floor of a block of flats around the time of the outbreak of the First World War, its entrance like the building’s gaping outh, a sparkling marquee teeth grin with the word PARADISE written in pale yellow neon.

The cinema is also built over a sewer and drainage overflows into the hall at strategic points in the book. It exudes a sense of filth and grime.

On a whim, the narrator, Holly, joins the underpaid staff of the Paradise and is slowly accepted into their coterie, made up of eccentric movie-loving misfits. The staff spend long hours at the Paradise. Days and nights passed in the cinema are followed by binge-watching of classic and art films at their respective dingy apartments. Despite the fact that the Paradise is dilapidated and their working conditions far from great, these eccentrics feel an intimate connection to the dirty old building, to the point that Helen occasionally has (drug-fuelled?) “time-slip” experiences haunted by visions the cinema’s past. When the owner of the Paradise dies, the cinema is taken over by a chain, leading to an outbreak of bloody violence.

This is novel best appreciated by cinema buffs. Its title is a tribute to Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis, and each of the chapters is named after a different classic movie, which creates interesting parallels and counterpoints with the facts described in the respective chapters. Grudova draws on her love for the cinema and her experiences working as an usherette at the Cameo in Edinburgh after moving there from her native Canada. I’ve read elsewhere that Iris, the cinema owner, is based on a real character.

There is also a magical feel to the novel – which gets darker and darker, moving into Gothic and horror territory. The final chapters, an angry indictment of capitalism and gentrification, reminded me of other socially conscious contemporary novels, such as Fiona Mozley’s Hot Stew.

There is, in other words, much to admire and dig into here, but I must admit that the novel was not for me. The pervasive sense of oppressive filth and decay (rather than “decadence” in the Romantic fin-de-siecle sense of the word) wore me down, and I found the novel’s obsession with bodily fluids, secretions and excretions gross and off-putting. Considering the nightmarish aspects and atmosphere of the Paradise, (let alone its working conditions) I found it hard to understand the staff’s connection with it and why they would take its takeover so much to heart.

Children of Paradise is receiving rave reviews and I can understand why, but unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to join the chorus of acclaim.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/20...

[Tracey Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did I bash through this in an afternoon? Yep. Couldn’t put it down. Weird and warm.

[fantine · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Picture houses are built for dreams, lies and fantasies. The plaster creatures clinging to the walls and ceilings, the fairground effect of all those lights and mirrors can only be accessory to the wildest illusions, the grandest, most unrealistic seductions.’

This is not a novel to expect sense from. A linear plot and grounded lessons, the cinema, with its ever-dark rooms and layers of grime and history, is not the place for this kind of clarity.

What this does explore is the intense, fleeting intimacy that institutions dealing in art, dwindling by the day, deal in and the often overwhelming nature of this work.

A girl in a foreign city begins working in a dilapidated, once grand cinema with a cult following and an equally cultish roster of staff. After lying about her cinema knowledge in the interview she is hired and enveloped by the gruelling life of an usher; cleaning shit, piss, popcorn, drugs, semen, lollies, jewels and other debris from between seat cushions and aisles. Dealing with the perverted and senile. Passing initiation tests she is accepted into the fold of her fellow ushers and so begin the after-work screenings, the pooling of found treasure, drug roulettes and clandestine hookups.

Central to the group, to the novel, is the sharing of film. This is a heavily referential work, though I did not find this to hinder my reading experience. It is clear the author, an usher herself, has a deep passion for film and labelling the part cinema plays in this novel as pretentious feels disingenuous; at best, tacky.

I’ve worked high-end hospitality; serving the entitled and giddy, devouring leftovers and stale bottles of red wine after each shift, stumbling home and vomiting in the shower from combining dregs. Smelling like dairy and sweat whilst spilling champagne that costs more than my wages. The delirium that takes hold when shifts seem to repeat, the same complaints or inappropriate comments, as if we are all performing in a play.

I’ve worked longest as a bookseller, the surrounding of pages eliciting a confessional attitude from customers who divulge traumatic anecdotes over the latest Wilbur Smith or ask for a recommendation for a terminally ill family member. Proselytizing on the cancer-curing nature of celery juice, bulk buying political texts to ship to countries that have banned them; the woman who needs to sniff every book before buying as she is allergic to certain ink. I’ve learned intimate details from books ordered and order books according to intimate details.

There's something about working in a place regarded as erudite, where oddballs feel safe and artists once flocked and were fostered, reduced to corporate retail. It is so discordant. Capitalism kills creativity.

I adored this grotesque, sticky ode to the disappearance of spaces for art-obsessed freaks and creeps. Independent bookstores and cinemas have such a huge place in my life and heart, and the magnitude of loss means that despite the detached narratorial style and teeterings into the absurd, this packed quite an emotional punch for me. Definitely not for everyone, but this was a near perfect novel to me. Ugh.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here's to my first one-star book of the year: a nonsensical plot, awful writing, and terrible descriptions.

The title "Children of Paradise" is so lovely that I would have had it permanently inked on my arm. But for me, the book wrecked it. I'm not sure why wacky story ideas frequently feature puke, piss, and semen. They don't contribute anything to the plot and are only there to make readers feel horrible and disgusted.

The second half was incredibly dull, whereas the first half had just glorified the unflushed feces. Being a movie buff, I was thrilled to read this because it focused on a theater and its employees. However, it eventually gave me a bad taste in my mouth.

It was obvious that I was the ideal audience for the narrative style the novelist intended to showcase. I was disappointed by the way it was written, though.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

The film Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog glamorizes a lot of things: labour, art, sex, men, and I suppose I have too. People see it as some kind of metaphor for hard work and going against the odds. The scene where a man is crushed by the boat they are dragging up the hill always haunts me, the show must go on attitude, death is just another mess to sweep up. I wasn't any better...

I have previously read and loved Camilla Grudova's 2017 short story collection The Doll's Alphabet, a set of offbeat feminist stories, and (my review) of that concluded: "Highly recommended. Perhaps my own reservation is that most of the stories seem variations on a theme, and indeed given that the worlds she create have such similarities, I very much looked forward to reading the novel she is now apparently writing."

I'm not this is actually that novel, which was from interviews based around the 18th century, and, more significantly, I think I prefer Grudova in the novel form, as at times this felt like a stretched short story.

Children of Paradise is set in a one-prime cinema, the Paradise, in a city that resembles (but is not said to be) Edinburgh, and where our first person narrator manages to find a job, which she gets without any need for a resume or much of an interview. She soon realises this is a cinema whose glory day are passed, and which is staffed by an offbeat collection of otherwise unemployable individuals and visited by an eccentric cast of customers of which the most eccentric of all turns out to be the owner. And they may or may not be joined by ghosts of the past, with rumours that somewhere in the building there is a mysterious and hidden second screen.

Grudova has said in interviews that “I like restrictions in literature, I am like a slobby Oulipo wannabe”, and here her conceit is to name each chapter after a famous film from cinema history: “I try to hide a bit of each film in the book for people who have seen those films.”

Which works better as a device if you have seen those films, which I largely haven't, and while there were some obvious references (her fellow denizens of the Paradise are described in a chapter called The Seven Samurai), and the nod to her debut publisher (see my opening quote) is a nice one, but anything more hidden passed me by.

I couldn't help but contrast unfavourably with my immediately previous read Chicanes which also draws on famous films, but in a way that enabled the less-informed reader to still appreciate the references, and be led in search of the films, or scenes, themselves.

As I mentioned earlier, this felt like a stretch short-story, and the first 90% of the story describes the left-behind detritus and bodily fluids, rat-dropping infested catering, drugs, decaying infrastructure and blocked toilets of the scuzzy cinema in lavish but rather over-extended detail. The more interesting fantastical part of the story, and the more interesting writing, only really got going in the closing 20 pages, particularly the chapter The Last Picture Show, but this was too little too late for me.

The Last Picture Show
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
1971

Living in the past in the same place I have to be in the present, my mind often feels like a double exposed photograph, and the cinema like an ancient artefact I tread lightly around, to not displace any memory, though sometimes I am unsure where I am, whether a moment from the past will mistakenly come next, and time is just a mixed up jewellery box I grab helplessly from, wearing mismatched, tangled earrings and necklaces, some gaudy and fake, others real and precious, old and brand new.

So if you want to read Grudova, start with The Doll's Alphabet (and I'm interested to hear she is now working on another collection), and for a book on cinema and feminism, read Chicanes.

2.5 stars

[Hayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s been a while since I stayed up late to finish a book. This one pulls you into its surreal world and you keep going along with it despite how grotesque and icky it is.

It is amusing to me that I discovered this book by way of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 long list, yet this is so not what the Prize would dream of picking for the shortlist or the winner. But good on them for including this one. I’d been worried the Prize was losing its edge, what with its relentless overuse of the words ‘poignant’ and ‘delightful’ throughout their marketing. Children of Paradise is neither of those things, thank goodness.

This book made me think of The Breakfast Club meets Empire Records meets Angela Carter, with a dash of Bret Easton Ellis. If that sounds at all appealing to you then you may like this book.

[ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

someone please get david cronenberg on the phone i need him to do something for me

[Danielle McClellan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I jumped into this with enthusiasm because of its inclusion on the Women’s Prize long list. I thought I would love it as it as it is named after one of my favorite movies in the world (Marcel Carné's "Les Enfants du Paradis") and it is set behind the scenes at a movie theatre. I have always been a major film buff and I spent most of my teenage years working at a movie theatre. Then and throughout my twenties you could usually find me at the movies back in those distant, pre-internet golden years when Los Angeles was jam-packed with thrift shops and art house cinemas.

But this novel is definitely not for me. What a disappointment. Although I could see that the author nodded to the carnivalesque, misfit wackiness of Children of Paradise, as well as the other films that she name-checks, the rambling, gross-out, slacker-shocker scenarios were a loud and clear signal that this author is less interested in the deeper themes of any of those great films and more interested in the horror show that is soulless modern life in general and in particular the modern exploitative workplace. A particularly gratuitous scatalogical section made me decide to put the book down and go watch a movie instead.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5) In 2017 I reviewed Grudova’s surreal story collection, The Doll’s Alphabet, describing its tales as “perverted fairytales or fragmentary nightmares.” Okay then, let’s continue in that perverted, nightmarish vein. Holly, new to the country/city, finds a room in a shared flat and a job as an usher at the Paradise Cinema, which shows a random assortment of art films and cult classics. The building is so low-rent it’s almost half derelict, and the staff take full advantage of the negligent management to get up to all sorts of sexual shenanigans, as well as drinking and drug-taking, while on duty. Holly and her co-workers are truly obsessed with the cinema, watching every showing at work but also hosting all-night movie marathons in their apartments. “The outside world, all of its news, faded away, and the movies became my main mirror of the world,” she confesses. “They were a necessary evil, customers, so that we, the true devotees, could have access to the screen, our giant godlike monument.”

The title is simultaneously ironic and an homage to Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), and the chapters are named after particular films. A change of ownership forces the Paradise to become more mainstream – hello, Marvel flicks and hipster snacks – but a series of horrific accidents and deliberate acts makes it seem like a cursed place. Aping movie genres, perhaps, Children of Paradise starts off as an offbeat stoner comedy and by the end approaches horror to an extent I didn’t expect. The content becomes increasingly sordid, visceral, with no opportunity missed to mention bodily fluids and excretions. I’m not notably opposed to gross-out humour, but the whole thing felt quite distasteful as well as miserable.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm)]

Inside, there was a massive shit that took up the whole [toilet] bowl, like a well-done steak, the water around it stained brown.

The smell was so strong, I threw up in the toilet, right on top of her shit. I flushed it, but the water just rose and spilled onto the floor.

—

Paolo went down on me in the back row while a matinee of the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was playing, and I ate a bag of Minstrels I had stolen from the kiosk. Now and then I stuck one of the Minstrels in my vagina for Paolo to eat out. I came all over the seat, a damp indecipherable puddle warm like used dishwater, and when we left the screen, both our faces were covered in brown, sweet chocolate stains.

[Patrycja Krotowska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dziwaczna, klaustrofobiczna, całkiem niezła. Nie do końca mój typ literatury, ale słuchałam z zainteresowaniem i podobała mi się ta dziwność. To historia kobiety, która zatrudnia się w kinie o nazwie Paradise - wszyscy pracownicy są dość hmm nieprzeciętni, ale wkrótce i nasza narratorka dołącza do tej bliskiej sobie społeczności ludzi tego kina. Co ciekawe - rozdziały nazwane są tytułami filmów wraz z ich reżyserami.

[Catarina Correia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve never given a classification lower than 2 to any book, and never wrote a full review but this book was simply beyond my tolerance for disturbing descriptions. The only reason I did not DNF this book was because I listened to the audiobook on my commute and it was a short one. I found it to be a story based almost exclusively on awful, gratuitously disgusting descriptions, unlikable characters and pretentious references/comments. The plot was almost nonexistent, but predictable for the biggest events, and I could not find a purpose for reading through it. I do not recommend this read, and especially not at meal times!

[Nicole Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve just realised I hadn’t actually reviewed this book on here but it’s been over a year since I read it and I think about it almost everyday

[Alex (inactive) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite it being a short audiobook, this took ages to finish - it felt like a never-ending series of visceral, graphic descriptions that never led to anything deeper.

[Britta Böhler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Women's Prize Longlist / Book #3

[Amy [adleilareads] · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Pallavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2023.

RTC

Happy Reading!

[Sammi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He was lying down on the floor between two rows of seats. He was surrounded by cups and bottles. He had drunk the dregs of all the leftover drinks from the audience members"

3.5 rounded up

- Grungy, gritty, atmospheric 90's (?) movie theater culture
- Scouring the floors for spare change & drugs
- Velvet seats of an old cinema
- Offbeat crew of oddballs...eccentric... artistic...outsiders
- Coming-of-age during late night films
- Judging art, film, Hollywood, stars, the classics
- History held in theater walls, floors and ceilings; all with a story to tell
- Slow descent into darkness
- UNHINGED

Dark, disturbing, atmospheric and delightful.

Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 Longlist

[Lenka · Rating 5 out of 5]

⚠️ Alvorens dit boek te lezen is het aangeraden om de trigger warnings op te zoeken!

Nooit had ik gedacht dat ik een boek waar ik uit wou kruipen 5 sterren zou geven, maar hier zijn we dan.

“Children of paradise” kent een sfeer die je het liefst van jezelf wil afschudden maar je moet je er toch in onderdompelen voor de komende 196 pagina’s.

Het boek heeft een speciaal plekje in mijn hart en dus zal het als geen verrassing komen dat dit een reread was. De atmosfeer van de ‘Paradise’ is zo ontzettend verontrustend dat ik haast naar een andere wereld werd getransporteerd. Niet op een leuke fantasy manier maar eerder een horror variant.

Camilla Grudova heeft van een meesterwerk gemaakt waardoor je makkelijk meeloopt door de geheime gangen van de cinema, de schermen ontdekt en de vriendschappen omarmt.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Helen McClory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gloriously disgusting, bloody, alluring - an ode to a vanishing world of old filthy, gaudy independent cinemas and the curious souls who work there. one for any fan of their local fleapit.

[Khai Jian (KJ) · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Picture houses are built for dreams, lies and fantasies. The plaster creatures clinging to the walls and ceilings, the fairground effect of all those lights and mirrors can only be accessory to the wildest illusions, the grandest, most unrealistic seductions."

Children of Paradise is narrated by Holly, who just found a job at the Paradise - one of the city's oldest cinemas, where its glory days have passed. There, Holly cleans toilets, sweeps popcorn, befriends other employees (Sally, the manager; Otto, the assistant manager; Peter the projectionist and his son Flynn; Patricia, who never lifts a finger to work; Paolo and Cosmo), and encounters the eccentric owner of Paradise i.e. Iris. Holly's love and attachment towards the Paradise as well as her colleagues shattered when Iris died and a private corporation intended to take over the Paradise. Can Holly and her colleagues still maintain their rebelliousness and identity in light of these hurdles?

Children of Paradise, Camilla Grudova's debut novel, blends art and film with notions of identity, obsession, and capitalism quite well. Her strength in crafting a gothic atmosphere with vivid descriptions of decayed infrastructure, gruesome body horror, and unsettling human behaviors (which are featured in her short story collections) is showcased here as well. However, I do feel that the length of the novel (as opposed to the length of short stories) somehow restricted her ability to fully showcase the exquisiteness of her writing style. The disturbing and eerie feeling that Grudova is able to transmit through her prose in her short story collection, is less impactful here. Perhaps this is also due to my lack of familiarity with the references to films (P.S. each chapter in this book was named after a famous film from cinema history), which resulted in my inability to fully appreciate what Grudova is trying to achieve with this book. That said, I am slowly becoming a fan of Grudova's writing and without a doubt, she has proven herself to be an exciting voice in the literary arena. A 3.8/5 star read for me.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible

[od1_40reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved ‘The Doll’s Alphabet’, which was my reason for wanting to read ‘Children of Paradise’, Grudova’s first novel/novella. But unfortunately it doesn’t hold up to her wonderful short story collection.

It’s a sort of ‘The Shining’ in a cinema set up. It’s not a bad book at all, and the eccentric, quirkiness of Doll’s Alphabet is apparent. It’s a very easy read, and the prose comfortably flows.

But overall I was just a bit meh, whereas I thought Doll’s Alphabet was entirely standout in it’s oddness.