Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova review – loner life at a crumbling cinema

Camilla Grudova’s debut, the short fiction collection The Doll’s Alphabet, was acclaimed as feminist horror reminiscent of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. In 13 often jarringly grotesque stories, Grudova built miniature scenarios to explore the disappointments of young women’s lives: dystopian worlds studded with double meanings and symbolic objects such as inscrutable dolls, mannequin parts and sewing machines. With slyly rococo titles such as Edward, Do Not Pamper the Dead and The Moth Emporium, it was as if the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington had undertaken a collaboration with David Lynch.Grudova’s themes of identity and isolation continue on a larger scale in her first novel, set in an old cinema called the Paradise.

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