Sophie Kemp

A hilarious, surreal, and devastating journey into the mind of Reality Kahn, a young woman on a quest to be the greatest girlfriend of all time.

It was decreed from the moment she was born. Twenty-three-year-old Reality Kahn would embark on a quest so great, so bold. She would become the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies magazine, Girlfriend Weekly.

When she attends a party in Gowanus at a punk venue known as “Paradise,” Reality meets Ariel, who will become her boyfriend. She bravely works for his everlasting affection and joins a clinical trial created by Dr. Zweig Altmann to help her become a more perfect girlfriend. She stars in a new commercial. She learns how to become an indelible host. But Reality will also learn that sheer will and determination, and a very open heart, are not always enough to make true love manifest.

At turns laugh-out-loud funny, tragic, and jarring, Reality’s quest grows ever complicated as the men in her Ariel, her waterpark commercial agent Jethro, and Dr. Altmann himself prove treacherous. Paradise Logic is a thrilling, psychosexual breakdown of our obsession with authentic true love, asking whether that is even possible in a patriarchal world, and announces Sophie Kemp as a wholly original, transformative, and brilliant new voice in fiction.

Paradise Logic

Me whenever I am alone in any situation ever 

Clark Louis

Once again, I was making cell phone moves. I was making texting moves. It was the free jazz of Reality's mind. I was thinking of just what to say, and how. It was important to be smooth. I had to maintain an aura of nonchalance.

I never gave her permission to just turn my bedroom into a kind of salon d’artiste. This was not Paris 1899! It was actually a hundred and twenty years later!

Paradise Logic quotes

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