Striving for Paradise
Reviewed: Paradise Estate, Max Easton, Giramondo Paradise Estate, Max Easton’s second novel, is in many ways a book about disintegration. The ironically-named titular location, a Sydney sharehouse that draws together the book’s central characters, is dilapidated to a hazardous degree: between mould, pestilence, fire and flooding, it almost exhibits a will to self-destruct. It is also home to a cast of individuals dealing with the fallout of various implosions—breakup, injury, pandemic-induced lifestyle changes; they find company and community in one another even if that can be tenuous. Here, Easton seems to ask: how might one create meaning and pursue a […]