A Quitters Paradise A Novel Elysha Chang by Elysha Chang instant download after payment.

An NPR Critics Summer Pick

"A glorious, pondering, heartbreaking, extremely funny, very special book." —Sarah Jessica Parker

In A Quitter's Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother's death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own.

Eleanor is doing just fine. Yes, she's keeping secrets from her husband. Sure, she quit her PhD program & is now conducting unauthorized research on illegitimately procured mice. And, true, her mother is dead, & Eleanor has yet to go through her things. But what else is she supposed to do? What shape can grief take when you didn't understand the person you've lost?

Resisting at every turn, Eleanor tumbles blindly down a path toward confronting her present. As Eleanor's avoidance of her feelings results in a series of outrageous—outrageous—often hilarious—choices, her actions begin to threaten all she holds most dear. Meanwhile, glimpses of Eleanor’s childhood & family history in Taiwan unfurl, revealing long-held secrets, & Eleanor starts to realize that she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts. But will she be brave enough to withstand the reckoning she’s hurtling toward?

At once disarmingly provocative & compulsively readable, A Quitter’s Paradise is an unexpectedly funny study of the beauty & contradictions of grief, family bonds, & self-knowledge, exploring the ways we unwittingly guard the secrets of our loved ones, even from ourselves.

Elysha Chang is a writer & educator based in Brooklyn, & has taught creative writing at Blue Stoop Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, & Villanova. Her short works explore otherness, displaced desire, & the Asian American experience. These works have been published in Center for Fiction Magazine, Fence, GQ, The Rumpus, & others.