This Vacant Paradise (Hardcover)

The 1990s--Newport Beach, California. Money is God. A man's worth is judged by the size of his boat, the make of his car. A woman's value is assessed by the blank perfection of her quantifiable desirability: dress size, cup size, the whiteness of her teeth. And oh yes: her youth. Though Esther Wilson, the heroine of Victoria Patterson's debut novel, has the looks to marry well, things aren't going as planned. She's nearing her mid-30s and possibly aging out of the only role she's equipped to play: wife to a powerful member of the elite.
In the tradition of Edith Wharton and Henry James, "This Vacant Paradise" recasts the important questions about our very American obsessions: class, caste, race, age, and the roles of men and women in our drive toward an ever more lofty sense of our upward mobility.
Victoria Patterson, author of the story collection "Drift," a Story Prize and California Book Award finalist, gives us a novel of such rigor and complexity that it feels too masterful to be her first. Like ZZ Packer or Robert Stone, Patterson's prose is at once wickedly entertaining and searingly intelligent.
"Patterson beautifully parses the consequences of one woman's fall in this memorable, penetrating, fully achieved novel." --The New York Times Book Review

Story Prize and California Book Award finalist Victoria Patterson revisits Newport Beach in This Vacant Paradise, examining the intersections of economics, class, race, sex, and family expectations during the mid-1990s.

Esther lives with her grandmother, a virulent matriarch who controls her family through her wealth. Esther knows that an advantageous marriage replete with social standing, familial and peer approval, and financial rewards will alleviate her struggles. But she has been known to self-sabotage, and her loved ones are rooting for her not to blow it with her latest beau, especially since she's at the ripe old age of thirty-three.

All is well until she begins a tumultuous love affair with Charlie, a local college professor known for his unconventional ideals as much as for his golf game and good looks. He sets a fire inside Esther, sparking and delivering her--whether by choice or not--from the insular, safe, and stifling confines of societal expectations to an alternate, unglamorous, and indefinable course. The result is a stunning debut novel: a powerful work of fiction sure to provoke and engage.

"Patterson writes with the exuberance of a natural storyteller. Her cast is rich, her narrative sinuous and masterfully structured." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Considering the subject matter--the real housewives of Orange County--Patterson's debut novel (after story collection Drift) is surprisingly sophisticated and nuanced." --Publishers Weekly