“Paradise Close,” the debut novel from poet and critic Lisa Russ Spaar, is an enchanting, soulful meditation on what it means to be home. Filled to the brim with deliberate, gorgeous writing and characters that draw you in from the moment you’re introduced to them, this is a novel that stays with readers long after they’ve finished the last page.
Paradise Close (or “The Close,” as it is referenced throughout) is the name of the ancestral homestead in eastern Pennsylvania that serves as the novel’s main focal point, a figurative black hole into which the book’s main characters are pulled at prime stages of their emotional development.
Many generations pass through its doors. It is where teenage orphan Marlise Schade, nearly comatose from starvation, connects with the primal — and literal — roots of her existence, and where Silas Newman, a young artist tortured by mental illness, finds unconditional love.
The Close is where Zeno Mastrogiovanni, a troubled Vietnam veteran, finds redemption. It is where Otto Wenner, a quiet, introspective umbrella-maker and Bea Schade, a young, beautiful housewife trapped in a lukewarm marriage, find love, and where one of the characters — as sadly, and as beautifully, as death can be — breathes their last.
The novel’s chapters jump back and forth in time as the book progresses, but no matter how large the gap in years, The Close and the land that surrounds it remains the epicenter of each character’s journey.
If The Close is the physical home to which these characters have no choice but to return, then Marlise Schade is the spiritual one, the main character that also, in one way or another, is found in nearly every chapter. A mild spoiler: She interacts with each of the characters, even when it is not immediately obvious why (a dazzling culmination of events in the novel’s third act answers many of the questions asked in the second). It is her realizations about life and its fullness that resonate so deeply with the reader.
And it is chiefly through Marlise that the dizzying heights of love and sex and accomplishment clash with the devastating lows of hallucinations, mental illness, and shame; it is in her that nearly all of the other characters realize who they are and what they have become — especially Tee Handel, a poet who discovers a mysterious woman who has, by all accounts, tried to commit suicide — and failed — in the surrounding woods.
At the same time, she becomes a mirror to the reader, as well. Marlise challenges us to reflect on the value of artistic expression, on the experience of complete and utter abandonment, on what it means to embrace every stage of life, from the fragile years of teenagerdom to the bewildering post-divorce years of midlife to the ever-tightening embrace of old age.
The novel’s author, Lisa Russ Spaar, is also a poet, which is evident right from the novel’s first pages. Her wordplay is fantastic, and her descriptions can be absolutely breathtaking. Consider this passage describing a flock of migrating swifts: “he’d witnessed from the lookout their gallows-hour swarming, their majestic, gilt scissoring of the air, their ribbony plummets in twos and threes into the chimney top.”
Spaar has a keen eye for observation and is extremely skilled at capturing life’s everyday moments. Although there is ample use of imagery throughout the novel, there are no unnecessary words or scenes: Spaar is excellent at knowing exactly when to elaborate and when to retreat, letting the mood of a scene fill in any gaps.
“Paradise Close” is a powerhouse of a novel. Its chapters are short and meditative, and although the book’s plot and main characters can make a reader sit and devour it all in one sitting, it is, at its heart, a book that is best reflected upon and savored.
Christy Gualtieri is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Edgewood.
First Published: March 16, 2025, 9:00 a.m.
