I had such resolve to blog this one quickly because I had thoughts on the ending, but December, man, is just too much between gastro illnesses and parades and who’s turn is it for the chocolate calendar.
Onwards we go, regrets about time aside: Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise oscillates its chapters between two perspectives one of the young boy Amir, who is the sole survivor of a shipwrecked group of refugees, and of Vänna, a girl on the Greek island where Amir washes ashore. Vanna is doing her best to help Amir – for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious other than perhaps young people, not yet made assholes by the world, are better able to empathize and respond to the vulnerability and need.
At a time of year where the Christmas story surrounds – that of a refugee taken in with hospitality and care etc – and while the world heaves with displaced, erased, violently taken humans it is hard to read this one and probably necessary (maybe why it was in the short list for Canada Reads?).
And if this book is a reminder of why we read fiction – to be in this space of empathetic connection both with those running and those who feel overrun – it is also for its speculative possibilities. The end of the book calls us to question not only what has happened in the preceding pages, but also if and when. With the alternating chapters those of ‘before’ and ‘after’ our final chapter is ‘now.’ In that final chapter the reader can read into the ending multiple paths of possibility at once – those of hope and loss simultaneously. Wanting a satisfying conclusion you could join the thousands of others who have googled “what does the ending of What Strange Paradise mean, or you could, I suppose, approach it as a question of what you do now to shape that and the broader ending.
Literary Vice 