The Paradise Guest House

by Ellen Sussman

[Leah]

When I was offered Ellen Sussman’s third novel The Paradise Guest House to review, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. I thought the cover was really lovely, and I was very interested to get a personal insight into the Bali bombings, so I was pretty pleased when it arrived and knew I’d have to devour it during my next couple of days off, and when those days off arrived, that’s exactly what I did. It didn’t take me long to read as it’s a relatively short read – coming in at just under 250 pages, and I must admit, it left me a little wanting.

The Paradise Guest House is split into three different parts. The first part sees us meeting Jamie as she lands in Bali, and makes her way to the guest house where she’ll be staying. It’s immediately apparent that something terrible happened to her, and we soon learn she was a victim of the Bali bombings and that she’s back for the one year reunion. She’d rather be any place else in the world, but if it means she gets to see Gabe again, than that’s where she’ll be. Gabe is the man who rescued her and nursed her back to health after the bombings, but will he still be right where she left him or will he have left Bali for good?

To be fair, The Paradise Guest House was by no means a bad book. I didn’t hate it, I just also didn’t like it. I suppose if you asked me how I felt after finishing the book, the word I’d have used would have to be ‘meh’. The story just didn’t seem to have much in the way of a plot. I understood Jamie was returning for the one-year anniversary of the Bali bombings, but was that it? Was that all I was meant to take from the plot? I felt as if it told the story backwards. Instead of starting a year after the bombings, I’d have probably preferred it to tell the story straight up, instead of getting to the bombings mid-way through the novel. There seemed to be a massive lack of build-up, to the bombings, to the anniversary, and it seemed I didn’t really get to know Jamie or Gabe at all. We didn’t get any real insight into what Jamie was like before, so we couldn’t see how the bombings changed her.

There were bits I really liked and would have liked to have seen more of, particularly Nyoman who owns The Paradise Guest House, along with his family members, and Bambang and TukTuk, a young homeless boy and his dog. I just felt there could have been so much more to the book, it took a massively difficult subject, and don’t get me wrong, Sussman wrote about it so well, but I just wanted a bit more. I especially hated the way it just ended, so abruptly. I don’t quite understand when authors do that, leave a story hanging on a thread, not letting us know if there was a happy-ever-after in the offing. It drives me nuts, and it’s not difficult to add an extra page just for a little Epilogue. So, no, probably not the read for me, but it was good in parts, and it was well written, I just wanted something a bit more.