Camilla Grudova crafts hazy underworld of damaged oddballs in debut novel CHILDREN OF PARADISE

When the worldview of Canadian author Camilla Grudova was first immortalised in a book, 2017’s short story collection The Doll’s Alphabet, it had me pushing it on friends unsolicited: I thought I’d found a generationally great writer. I still do, in a sense, but have had to wait until now for Grudova’s next work. Children Of Paradise, her debut novel, dials back the magical realism of her short fiction (while intermittently gesturing to it) but paints a hazy underworld of damaged oddballs and mirthless penpushers.

Set in an ancient, crumbling cinema with a shambolic cast of projectionists, ticket collectors, managers and patrons, protagonist Holly joins the team and, given time, breaks her co-workers’ cold exterior. Their collective bond, though threadworn, proves necessary when the cinema is acquired by a chain and an impeccably appalling pettifogger is shipped in for a supervisor role, quashing a work environment of near-anarchy but sending matters south otherwise.

A novel about film purists – maybe for them, too, each chapter titled after a classic movie – many of Children Of Paradise’s characters seem both cartoonish and drawn from life: the supervisor, a staunch Marvel enthusiast with dyed blue hair, stands out in this respect. Interestingly, it’s impossible to tell from the dialogue which part of the English-speaking world it’s set in; likewise the narrative detail, until an aside about local accents in a dramatisation of Mary, Queen Of Scots. Meanwhile, since The Doll’s Alphabet, Grudova has moved to Edinburgh and – one learns – works in a cinema. Quite the biographical punchline.