Paradise Logic
Published on 24. April 2025
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-1-3985-3374-5 (ISBN)
Description
'George Saunders meets Ottessa Moshfegh' OBSERVER
'Smart, jarring and wickedly funny' GUARDIAN
'The excavation of heterosexual desire our age deserves' LITHUB
'Imagine Vladimir Nabokov as a manic pixie dream girl, and you'll be halfway there' GQ
'Top of our reading pile' SUNDAY TIMES STYLE
'Bitterly funny' VOGUE
A hilarious, surreal, and devastating journey into the mind of Reality Kahn, a young woman on a quest to be the greatest girlfriend of all time.
It was decreed from the moment she was bornth. Twenty-three-year-old Reality Kahn would embark on a quest so great, so bold. She would become the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies' magazine, Girlfriend Weekly.
When she attends a party at a punk venue known as 'Paradise', Reality meets Ariel, her fated boyfriend. Determined to win his affection, she joins a cutting-edge clinical trial created by Dr Zweig Altmann to help her become a perfect girlfriend. She stars in a new commercial. She learns how to become an indelible host. But Reality will also learn that sheer will and determination, and a very open heart, are not always enough to make true love manifest.
At turns laugh-out-loud funny, tragic and jarring, Reality's quest grows ever more complicated as the men in her life: Ariel, her agent Jethro, and Dr Altmann himself, prove treacherous.
?
PARADISE LOGIC is a thrilling breakdown of our obsession with authentic true love, and announces Sophie Kemp as a brilliant and wholly original new voice in fiction.
'Some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable' MEGAN NOLAN
'Totally surreal. I love a book that's ?funny while being devastating?' - CAT COHEN
'The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest' GARY SHTEYNGART
Advance reader reviews for PARADISE LOGIC:
'I had so much fun reading Kemp's debut... absolutely nuts, in the best way'
'What a weird book, I loved it... incredibly readable and worryingly relatable'
'Smart, jarring and wickedly funny' GUARDIAN
'The excavation of heterosexual desire our age deserves' LITHUB
'Imagine Vladimir Nabokov as a manic pixie dream girl, and you'll be halfway there' GQ
'Top of our reading pile' SUNDAY TIMES STYLE
'Bitterly funny' VOGUE
A hilarious, surreal, and devastating journey into the mind of Reality Kahn, a young woman on a quest to be the greatest girlfriend of all time.
It was decreed from the moment she was bornth. Twenty-three-year-old Reality Kahn would embark on a quest so great, so bold. She would become the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies' magazine, Girlfriend Weekly.
When she attends a party at a punk venue known as 'Paradise', Reality meets Ariel, her fated boyfriend. Determined to win his affection, she joins a cutting-edge clinical trial created by Dr Zweig Altmann to help her become a perfect girlfriend. She stars in a new commercial. She learns how to become an indelible host. But Reality will also learn that sheer will and determination, and a very open heart, are not always enough to make true love manifest.
At turns laugh-out-loud funny, tragic and jarring, Reality's quest grows ever more complicated as the men in her life: Ariel, her agent Jethro, and Dr Altmann himself, prove treacherous.
?
PARADISE LOGIC is a thrilling breakdown of our obsession with authentic true love, and announces Sophie Kemp as a brilliant and wholly original new voice in fiction.
'Some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable' MEGAN NOLAN
'Totally surreal. I love a book that's ?funny while being devastating?' - CAT COHEN
'The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest' GARY SHTEYNGART
Advance reader reviews for PARADISE LOGIC:
'I had so much fun reading Kemp's debut... absolutely nuts, in the best way'
'What a weird book, I loved it... incredibly readable and worryingly relatable'
Reviews / Votes
'I loved this wild, roaming marvel of a debut, acutely aware that I was reading a book completely unlike any other, admiring this voice which metabolises perennial concerns about love, identity and gender into some of the weirdest and funniest prose imaginable. It's a privilege to spend time with Sophie Kemp's singular mind' - Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings and Acts of Desperation'I saw Kemp reading from this book in New York and picked it up as fast as I could. It's a totally surreal? account of a woman who wants to be the world's best girlfriend. It's bizarre and grotesque, and some lines I had to? reread and be like, "What the fuck?", which is always exciting. It's incredibly well written?. I love a book that's ?funny while being devastating?. I don't know if it changed my view on relationships but it definitely made me grateful for the ?one I have.' - Cat Cohen 'Sophie Kemp's absurd, horny, and epic debut had me asking questions like: Is existence meaningless and random? And most importantly-, how can I make my eyes resemble those of an introspective family pet?' * Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy * 'The funniest book of the year and one of the smartest' * Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story * 'Paradise Logic is an astonishment, and the odyssey of Reality Kahn reads like the strangest, funniest, most profound, vibrant, and trippy dream you ever had, except it's not just a dream, it's a work of art, deeply real and dangerously alive. A great writer is bornth' * Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You * 'The 21st C heir apparent to Kathy Acker. Reality sets about her quest with a Quixotean determination. A wildly propulsive novel and delight to behold' * Jen George, author of The Babysitter at Rest * 'Offbeat, hilarious, and often dismal, Paradise Logic is the excavation of heterosexual desire our age deserves' * LitHub * Sophie Kemp's surreal novel will be top of our reading pile * Sunday Times Style * 'The style is George Saunders meets Ottessa Moshfegh, filtered through - at a rough guess - 4chan, mumblecore and 18th-century marriage manuals... Kemp knows exactly what she's doing, and tonally the novel is a feat, expertly switching between laughter, shock and heartache, sometimes in a heartbeat' * Observer * 'Smart, jarring and wickedly funny... Kemp's language is profane and outrageously camp, blending punk-infused chutzpah, feminist irony, meme-worthy disclosures and mic drops with sick, unsettling humour... I adored this novel: it's a clever and wholly original skewering of the modern dating landscape, our obsession with true love, and the outlandish lengths we'll go to in its pursuit'
* Guardian * 'Deranged, but also ecstatic and weird and brimming over with the possibilities of what language can do. Imagine Vladimir Nabokov as a manic pixie dream girl, and you'll be halfway there'
* GQ, Best Books of 2025 *
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Simon & Schuster Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 145 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
324 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3985-3374-5 (9781398533745)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Sophie Frances Kemp was born in 1996 in Schenectady, New York. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Vogue, GQ, Pitchfork, and The Baffler, among others. She received her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where she now teaches in the writing program. She lives in Brooklyn.