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Title: Lost Paradise

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: Cees Nooteboom, Susan Massotty (translator)

Narrator: Rebecca Mozo, Paul Boehmer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-22-14

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

In Lost Paradise, Nooteboom sets out to connect two seemingly unrelated strangers whom he has glimpsed on his travels, and to explore the major impact that small interactions can have on the course of our journeys. A beautiful woman aboard a Berlin-bound flight becomes Alma, a young lady who leaves her parents' Sao Paolo home on a hot summer night in a fit of depression. Her car engine dies in one of the city's most dangerous favelas, a mob surrounds her, and she is pulled from the automobile. To escape her memory of the assault, she flees across the world, to Australia, where she becomes involved in the beautiful but bizarre Angel Project. Not long after, Dutch literary critic Erik Zontag is in Perth, Australia, for a conference. He has found a winged woman curled up in a closet in an empty house. He reaches out, and for a second allows his fingertips to brush her feathers - and then she speaks. The intersection of their paths illuminates the extraordinary coincidences that propel our lives.

Members Reviews:

Five Stars

:)

Not much for a first impression

Cees Noteboom is one of these authors that developed a cult following around him. This is my first try. Not very successful I would say. Brazilian girl decides to drive at night in the middle of a favela (who does that?). Car breaks down. Gets gang raped and loses interest in life. Decides to go to Australia to understand the meaning of it all. Gets laid with a mysterious aboriginal artist that does not say anything but knows the ancient secrets (or at least she believes he does). Gets healed. Meets a middle aged Dutch literary critic in crisis. The guy gets crazily in love with her after one night where nothing really happens and then they part. They meet three years after in a Spa in Austria (!?) where the Dutch guy goes to run away from his abusive 18-year younger girlfriend and also to lose some kilos. She is a masseuse. Nothing happens. Come on. Not really much for a first impression.

A Curious gem of a novel

Reading this book, I was reminded of the works of the Italian neo-realist author, Italo Calvino. Nooteboom, like Calvino, paces his novel with the same detached and playful rhythm as chapter follows chapter and yet the picture of the whole is only teasingly revealed. The two authors share an economy of prose and details. The mythical and the real lean into each other and a dream-like aura seemingly surrounds everything.

Here, in Lost Paradise (Paradis verloren) the reader is thrown into an intense world of dreaming and fate and before anything makes sense, where you feel as if the characters have been fully revealed, the scenery changes. The book is divided into two: we have in the first section, the Brazilian girls and their exploration of Australia and then, in the latter part, we have the cynical Dutch journalist in Austria for his spa treatment week. Alma, the one who most needs to escape is emotionally wounded from a terrible night in Sao Paolo and her friend carries her along, keeping her friend in check. While in Perth, they get involved in an Angel Project wherein actors pose as angels in various places throughout the city.

When we read the second half that focus on Erik, we learn the older man and the young Alma have met before. Why is she now in Austria?

The book is fun and light despite the heavier themes. It is brisk and certainly inspires a second reading.