What Kind of Paradise: A Novel
A teenage girl breaks free from her father’s world of isolation to discover that her whole life is a lie in this propulsive new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear.
“A twisty, sharp coming-of-age story for our strange techno-utopian times.”—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.
In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future.
“A twisty, sharp coming-of-age story for our strange techno-utopian times.”—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans
The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother’s death: San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.
In this sweeping, suspenseful novel from bestselling author Janelle Brown, we see a young woman on a quest to understand how we come to know ourselves. It is a bold and unforgettable story about parents and children; nature and technology; innocence and knowledge; the losses of our past and our dreams for the future.
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Community Reviews
Great bookclub question:
“But consider this: I was barely eighteen and just experiencing the real world for the first time. I was like a baby fawn, taking my first wobbly steps into the world. I still couldn’t see past my own feet. Decide for yourself whether that’s a valid excuse.”
This gripping story is based on the mathematics prodigy Ted Kaczynski. Its plot mirrors Kaczynski’s reclusive, primitive lifestyle in a small Montana cabin, his war on technology, and the domestic terrorism that arose from his misguided belief that eliminating the titans would stop the forward march of industry.
Though only a fledgling science at the time, Saul Williams was one of a handful with minds bright enough to imagine “future-forward stuff” like neural networks and AI algorithms. At the Peninsula Research Institute, they modeled doomsday scenarios, instances where computers controlled vital aspects of modern life—the power grid, economy, warfare—and it all went wrong. The scenarios were not far fetched, Saul knew, and his need to distance himself from this future world drove him to escape it with his daughter Jane. She spent her childhood in isolation, homeschooled on Marx and Nietzsche, trained to flee the feds, not sure exactly what they stood for.
Jane idolized her father, which made it difficult for her to seek personal freedom once she had a taste for what was out there. She convinces him to allow her to go along on one of his mysterious trips, hoping to slip away and seek a different future. She had no idea what she was getting into and will find herself on the run with no experience in the basics of life outside of the isolated Montana bubble.
Brown’s industry expertise comes to bear in creating a realistic world, the history of computing, and the cast of characters who played a leading role. Nail biting and moving at the same time, this is a book that resonates.
“That’s how the computers will end up in charge someday, because we’ve forgotten that we need to be afraid of them.”
Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for providing this e-galley. #WhatKindofParadise #NetGalley
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