Elle Bishop has done something bad.

When we first meet Elle, she is with her husband, her children and her mother. They are all staying at the family holiday home in Cape Cod, where they go every year. Her best friend from childhood, Jonas, is there too… and Elle has just slept with him.

As we get to know Elle a little more, we realise that her sometimes reckless behaviour stems from a devastating trauma that took place in her teenage years.

Her life story is told in flashbacks between present-day Elle at Cape Cod and the younger Elle at various points in chronological order (‘1974: May, New York’ followed by ‘1979: July, Vermont’, etc.) We watch the tangle grow between her parents, their separation, and their subsequent new relationships, and we witness Elle get caught up in it all. It’s unconventional through and through, often terrifying and very upsetting.

It feels very much like a Hollywood script in places so I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that the author, Miranda Cowley Heller, used to be a chief executive at HBO. One surely for the big screen!

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller is going to be published by Penguin on 8th July. My copy was kindly sent to me (on my request) to review.