Paradise Logic & the Boyfriend Crisis

Sophie Kemp’s Paradise Logic is available from Simon & Schuster in the US and Scribner in the UK.

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The last time I obtained a boyfriend, I felt like the luckiest girlfriend in the world. After countless dates in New York that left me feeling demoralized and even degraded, I moved to a quirky little town in Pennsylvania that The New York Post once called the Amish Brooklyn. I noticed, immediately upon relocating there, that every girl I met had a boyfriend. Three days later, I had a suitor; within a few weeks, he was officially my boyfriend. He was a bit rattled by the pace at which we were moving, but I assured him that I needed to lock him down because there was a Boyfriend Crisis. At least in New York.

I’m 24 and have been going on dates in the city since I was 19. After giving up on Hinge, I hoped I could form new romances with men I met in bars. The results were about the same: Men were only interested in one-night-stands or elongated hookups that never achieved relationship status, the latter of which is famously referred to as a “situationship.” I have always loathed the term due to how technical and ugly it sounds. The type of relationship it’s referring to is ambiguous—and by giving a name to it, it makes it less ambiguous and normalizes this awful arrangement. Seldom do women enjoy situationships; it’s not that she agrees to it, but rather that she defeatedly settles. My longest “situationship” was two years. It began when I was 19. By 21, I realized how depressed it made me, that he convinced me I was crazy or outdated for wanting to put a label on what we had, like I wasn’t very feminist for wanting to be tied down to a man.

So I’m declaring the Boyfriend Crisis. The Boyfriend Crisis is what I think about as I breeze through Sophie Kemp’s much-discussed new novel Paradise Logic, which was published in March by Simon & Schuster. Our zany protagonist is waterslide commercial actress and zine maker Reality Kahn, who embarks on a mission to become the greatest girlfriend of all time. The rate at which she acquires a boyfriend in Gowanus is, in my opinion, unrealistic, but Kemp can’t waste time portraying the bleak dating scene in New York—it’s been done enough times. Instead she focuses on the urge to accept whatever love is offered to us and the exhausting role we have to play in order to maintain it. The constant performing. The need for male validation. The desire to be the only girl in the world for this one man—and not because she likes him, but because she wants to feel like the best.

Reality locks down Ariel, a detached 27-year-old NYU grad student who resides in a DIY venue called Paradise with his bros. We don’t learn much about him (except that he smokes crack occasionally, studies the Assyrian Empire, is in a band, and has school shooter vibes) because it’s not about him. Reality is so blinded by her desire that she can barely see him. His name flashes in her mind like a neon sign or a religious icon. Throughout the novel she casually refers to him as sweetie pie baby and my darling—he is not a person but a symbol that she is worthy.

A blurb on the back from Jen George likens Kemp to Kathy Acker—an apt comparison. Like the late literary freak’s 1984 cult classic Blood and Guts in High School, Paradise Logic is grating and fabulous. The ridiculous prose makes you roll your eyes as often as it makes you gasp with revelation. Kemp’s language is childishly repetitive: “I needed to have a clean spirit. It needed to be cleansed. The dirty spirit.” Sometimes it’s like she’s having a one-sided conversation with herself: “Why was tonight different from all the other nights? Tonight was a night that was different from all the other nights because…” She can come off as that one distressing friend who sends you ten texts in a row, obsessing over a situation whose magnitude you can’t quite grasp, and therefore it’s hard to empathize. But the most powerful part of reading Paradise Logic for me was eventually seeing too much of myself in this delusional narrator.

A few days before I opened up Paradise Logic, I went on a date with a 27-year-old in Bed-Stuy. We’d been texting for a week. Before we even met, he called me darling and baby, sent me poetic texts about how he was thinking of me and wished I was there. After what I considered a successful date—which included several moments of intimacy after hours of bar crawling and talking and holding hands and kissing—he stopped texting altogether. Such experiences lead me to worship a man who doesn’t treat me like this; enough instances of being treated like garbage can make a girl desperate for a man who treats her like a person and view him as a god. For too long I’ve considered myself dignified for having an abundant amount of love that I give away generously to people who don’t deserve it, people who don’t even want it. But that’s not dignity, nor is it generosity; it has nothing to do with love and everything to do with a need for validation and codependency.

In the few glimpses we get of Ariel, it’s obvious he treats Reality like she’s a nuisance. Sometimes he shuts the door and leaves her to idle in the living room while he jerks off to porn. Or he touches an ex-girlfriend’s neck at a party and, when Reality notices, he acts like she’s crazy. But Reality doesn’t mind. As long as she is the perfect girlfriend, all is well. The worst part about love is putting your faith in another person who will probably end up disappointing you—so she doesn’t. She only fixates on what she can control, because why put your trust in another person when people are notoriously unreliable?

Paradise Logic is devastating and effervescent at once. When Reality lets her guard down, you really feel for her. Even her standards for friends aren’t high at all: “Me and Soo-jin had been through a lot together. Each time I got raped in college she was always so nice to me after.” Intrusive thoughts of knives frequently penetrate her consciousness, but she shakes them off before she or we can know what it means. But nothing stops the prose from being anything but vivacious. The over-the-top voice can make you feel uncomfortable, annoyed, or even angry—but the truth is not a lot of literature evokes such intense emotions nowadays, and it’s undeniably refreshing. We’re still in an era where the Unhinged Female Protagonist reigns supreme, but she’s often tethered to the same tropes; we’ve had enough novels about women getting revenge on men through becoming murderers or cannibals, it’s not subversive anymore for a girl to kill. Kemp’s exaggerated imagining of a girlfriend as the ultimate servant is far more thought-provoking and creative. It poses an interesting question: What if we can explore grim topics in a fun way?

While the New York literary scene prioritizes style over plot, it’s typically because the writer has nothing interesting to say. Luckily this is not the case with Paradise Logic. Kemp’s musings on love and womanhood are a gut-punch and a riot; they broaden the ways we approach such complex subjects. Meanwhile, doodles and heart symbols make you wonder why more novels don’t experiment with form, why we don’t get a little freaky with it. Rules do not exist in Kemp’s world, and it makes for a sweet adventure.ヾ( ˃ᴗ˂ )◞ • *✰

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Danielle Chelosky lives in New York. Her new novella, Baby Bruise, is available from Filthy Loot.