"No other word for it: a charming book." Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek This 1986 satire of the midlife crisis follows newly single Simon, who moves into his own apartment and shockingly becomes the sex toy of a harem of lingerie models living down the hall. But Simon is such a worrier that instead of enjoying the ultimate male fantasy, he fears he is only being set up for a fall (no wonder his wife ditched him). Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission. Paradise is agile, witty and lightened by Barthelme's canny disassociations, and it is one of the blackest things he has written. --Richard Eder Although Donald Barthelme has written 12 previous books of fiction containing some of the most innovative influential stories of our day reading Paradise is a shock and a revelation. --Elizabeth Jolley There's nothing in art as dazzling and bewildering as a fully achieved style at its apex .

Though superficially Paradise seems to be a modest little caprice, Barthelme strikes every note . and the cascade of consonances he pours out really does seem to offer too much beauty for a conventional 1987 sensibility to see the sense behind it. --Michael Feingold.