Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova
Children of Paradise, following an usher drawn into the carnivalesque world of an independent cinema, is a wry cautionary tale for cinema lovers
In March 2020, during that frightening liminal period when everything was shutting down and no help from the government had been declared, mega cinema chain Cineworld began laying off thousands of its staff, furtively rehiring them after the announcement of the furlough scheme only to repeat the same process in October. It is in this kind of capitalist horror space, the twisted gothic of exploited labour in the arts, that Camilla Grudova’s debut novel Children of Paradise trades. Named for the 1945 film produced under the suffocation of Vichy France, Grudova’s tale of an usher drawn into the carnivalesque world of an independent cinema as the creepers of a cinema conglomerate edge in is a weird and haunting examination of the slow decay of the old ways, and the sly encroachment of careless, brave new worlds.
Her writing, appropriate for the author of short story collection Doll’s Alphabet, churns the stomach as the cinema falls into a state of sickening disrepair, first in the whirl of cinematic obsession and then in something more calculating and disturbing. Children of Paradise is a book for film lovers, each chapter structured around a classic the staff secretly watch, yet buried in its self-aware references and magical realist surrealism is a wry cautionary tale for cinema lovers, revealing the rotten core behind the creative industries, the grubby death knell of artistic romanticism. It is, in both senses, an entirely revolting work.
Atlantic Books, 7 Jul