Esto parece el paraíso es la fábula más inteligente, mágica y encantadora de John Cheever. No exenta de toques realistas, supone la vuelta del autor a una visión de la vida contemporánea más alegre y esperanzada, tras sus novelas y cuentos que examinaban el fracaso del sueño americano. Esto parece el paraíso es el brillante colofón a una de las carreras literarias más importantes del siglo XX.
El protagonista de esta historia es Lemuel Sears, un hombre elegante, de pelo blanco y piel morena que empieza a sentirse viejo. Teme estar llegando al final de su vida y perder así la capacidad de enamorarse, capacidad que ejerce con personas de ambos sexos. Pero en el curso de pocos días, dos acontecimientos cambiarán su destino: el primero es conocer a Renée, una joven de la que se enamora perdidamente, y el segundo es la lucha que debe emprender contra la gente que ha contaminado la laguna de su pueblo, un atropello a la placidez del paisaje y también a la continuidad de su existencia.

De eerste zin van het boek wordt ook als laatste zin van het verhaal gebruikt: “dit is een verhaal om in bed te lezen, op een regenachtige avond in een oude huis.”
Tussen deze identieke zinnen voltrekt zich een vertelling die zich het best laat typeren als een voortdurende vertekening van het perspectief van waaruit je een leven kunt beschrijven. Op het eerste gezicht hebben corruptie, ambtelijke willekeur, milieuverontreiniging, ouderdom, oplevende liefdes en gereserveerde gezinsverhoudingen weinig met elkaar te maken. Totdat Cheever daar een vertelling door laat lopen. Dan komen op het oog misschien absurde tegenstellingen bijeen in een wervelend ballet van woorden en zinnen die je kunnen betoveren.
Dat was zo toen ik het boek meer dan dertig jaar geleden las, en dat deed het nu wederom. ( )

"Oh What a Paradise It Seems," published shortly before John Cheever's 1982 death, is his fifth and final novel. It follows his previous novel, "Falconer," by five years and marks a return in tone and style to that of the earlier Cheever novels. If "Falconer" can be said to be Cheever's "prison novel," "Oh What a Paradise It Seems" is his "environmental novel."

Lemuel Sears may be fast approaching old age but his interest in women, especially those younger than him, is as passionate as it has ever been. Always on the make, even when he finds himself standing in a long bank teller's line, Sears manages to strike up a brief conversation with an attractive, much younger, woman that leads him into a rather one-sided love affair. As with so many previous male characters created by Cheever, Lemuel is at a disadvantage in the relationship because Renee remains as big a mystery to him throughout the relationship as she was the moment he first spotted her waiting in line ahead him.

Lemuel is a man of means who still enjoys some of life's simpler pleasures and he looks forward to the hours he spends ice-skating on little Beasley's Pond when it freezes over every winter. When he discovers that the pond is being purposely filled in and polluted by illegal dumping at the profit of the local mafia, Lemuel hires his own lawyer and scientist to fight those responsible for destroying the pond and endangering the health of everyone living near it.

Even though, at barely 100 pages, "Oh What a Paradise It Seems" is technically more a novella than a novel, Cheever, always the master short story writer, includes in it an interesting subplot or two to more fully flesh out his characters. As is so often the case in Cheever's novels, too, one of the main characters is a reluctant, but active, bisexual male who struggles to control the guilt he feels about his hidden sexual nature. This is such a common theme in Cheever's work that it is a wonder that the truth about his own sexual nature remained a well-kept secret until after his death.

Cheever barely lasted long enough to complete "Oh What a Paradise It Seems" before he died of cancer, and he may have intended it to be longer than it turned out to be. However, he packs so much into the novel's 100 pages that readers will find that it truly does read more like a novel than a novella. ( )

There's nothing like John Cheever at his best...and this is John Cheever at his best. Spare yet elegant. ( )