The action of the short story takes place in a bar Paradise Lounge of Keegan’s Railway hotel in a hilly provincial town, Glengarriff, where Beatrice, 32, married, mother of 2 children has met his lover to reveal that „ the affair was a failure”. The short story features also another protagonist of an equal importance that is an old lady named Miss Doheny. They are drawn together by a setting, this time it is a bar. If we would imagine this short story filmed, it could be perceived as a sitcom though this time it would not be a comedy.
The mood of the story is grayish and hopeless. It is revealed by the complete descriptions of the bar where such words and attributes like dim, darkened glass in one of two windows, rows of bottles, a cluttered mirror, patterned with cigarette burns and a diversity of stains are used.
The author reveals that the town and the hotel together strengthens the doomed mood of the story:
The town and the hotel – especially the meal they’d just consumed – combined to reflect the mood that the end of the affair had already generated.
The title Paradise Lounge is ironical, the resemblance with paradise could be the old ladies memories of youth. Memories like a paradise, a place to hide from monotony of life.
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