Paradise Park
By Allegra Goodman
(Dial Press Trade Paperback, Paperback, 9780385334181, 368pp.)
Publication Date: April 30, 2002
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook
Categories: General
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Allegra Goodman has delighted readers with her critically acclaimed collections Total Immersion and The Family Markowitz, and her celebrated first novel, Kaaterskill Falls, which was a national bestseller and a National Book Award finalist.
Abandoned by her folk-dancing partner, Gary, in a Honolulu hotel room, Sharon realizes she could return to Boston—and her estranged family—or listen to that little voice inside herself. The voice that asks: “How come Gary got to pursue his causes, while all I got to pursue was him?” Thus, with an open heart, a soul on fire, and her meager possessions (a guitar, two Indian gauze skirts, a macramé bikini, and her grandfather’s silver watch) Sharon begins her own spiritual quest. Ever the optimist, she is sure at each stage that she has struck it rich “spiritually speaking”—until she comes up empty. Then, in a karmic convergence of events, Sharon starts on the path home to Judaism. Still, even as she embraces her tradition, Sharon’s irrepressible self tugs at her sleeve. Especially when she meets Mikhail, falls truly in love at last, and discovers what even she could not imagine—her destiny.
Allegra Goodman's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Allure, Commentary, and Slate. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award and the Salon magazine award for fiction. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is at work on her next book.
“Clear, rain-washed prose ...In Allegra Goodman's ebullient, bittersweet, plaintive Song of Sharon, the heroine’s true achievement is finding poetry in.becoming who she’s been all along.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[The] narrator, that Sharon Spiegelman, has one of the most enchanting, idiosyncratic voices since Augie March.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“With Sharon Spiegelman, Goodman has created a Huck Finn for the modern age, drifting down the river of American spirituality.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“Like Saul Bellow and Philip Roth before her, Goodman has achieved a breakthrough book.”
—Time
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