Reviews with content warning for Child death - To Paradise

Reviews tagging 'Child death'

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

16 reviews

fkshg8465's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Another sadly beautiful book, it is it a beautifully sad book?, by Hanya Yanagihara. Haunting. It’ll start with me a long time, just like A little Life. Grateful to have read it.

Content Warnings

rickle400's review

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I’m always impressed with the underlying heart filled message of human tenacity that is so characteristic of this writer (and what called me back to her writing) While this book continues to be true to that style, it is too long and lacks the depth I expected. The plot is very dragged out and some of the more complex details of world building needed more development in my opinion. For the length and patience required to complete this book im not sure I’d recommend :(

Content Warnings

donutlookaway's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

wormgirl's review

Go to review page

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

erebus53's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

CW: pandemic, lab testing on animals, armed police, dystopia, military law, radicalisation/terrorism, chronic illness, seizures, environmental destruction, arranged marriage, internment camps etc.

Spanning roughly 200 hundred years this is a book about a world similar to our own but subtly different. It starts in the 1890s in an America which has some areas where it is legal to marry anyone you wish. It discusses 1990s in the same place only with a backdrop of the looming spectre of HIV. The final part is in the 2090s after waves of pandemics have changed the face of the First World into a dystopian vision of strict controls and segregation.

The book discusses health and frailty, chronic illness, being gay, the idea of inheritance and Legacy, life and treatment of migrants of ethnic minority, and love, feud, vulnerability, and .. people being people.

When I got the audiobook I had no idea it was such a long read (over 900 pages or 28+hours in the Audiobook) but the story wasn't really slow.. it just had a LOT in it. It seemed a poetic decision to have a recurring set of names and places. Partly this was to reinforce the continuity of lineage, inheritance and flow of time. Looking at things from different cultural perspectives over time highlights the changes caused by the passage of time, but also the similarities.

This book is artful and tells the stories within it through letters, memories, and stories told to others. It leans hard into the Hawaiian / Pacific Islands' oral tradition, and also highlights the place of those shared stories we tell each other, and how they cement families and communities. It also shows how that knowledge can be so fragile and be lost to time when ideas are not shared or if they cannot be passed on well.

This story starts as a piece of historical speculative fiction, but the latter parts of the book are set in a police state. Published in 2022, this book clearly channels a lot of the common ground we have experienced in the face of global pandemic. Freedom of information, and the radicalisation of rebels and conspiracy theorists against government control, are sympathetically highlighted by the use of main characters on both sides of the fence, one working for the government to limit the casualties of disease, and one fighting against government misinformation and lack of social freedoms.

For all the big ideas, the thing that really sells this whole book to me is the solid characters. The feelings expressed and the stuff they are going through really resonate with me. A number of the characters over the span of the book deal with anxiety, trauma and chronic physical illness. The relationships formed are often oddly unbalanced, either due to finances, physical/emotional frailty, or even just charisma, and the problems those couples have feel very real to me.

I could go on, but it would be too much. The characters were believable and human, and representation of disability and mental illness was relatable. The discussion of migrants and ethnic minority was an element I valued, and I loved that with the use of Hawaiian language I could still pick up one word in three due to its similarity with te reo Māori (which I only have a very basic familiarity with). This was a really good book, and I should have read it last year.

Content Warnings

nibs's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book. I was mad at it in its third quarter for its intense surprise pandemic-ness, but it really pulled together in the last quarter with more dystopian themes. There are some things that frustrated me about this book - a lot was to do with feeling blindsided about the pandemic content (it doesn't appear until halfway through and is very heavy on the pandemic content in the secone half) and it all felt too close due to covid. I took multiple extended breaks and almost DNFed at 75%. But I'm glad I finished it.
This book has an epic scope. I want to reread it some day and further map out its intricacies. Its complex and beautiful and philosophical.

Content Warnings

ame_lepage's review

Go to review page

slow-paced

2.25

This was one of the most painful reading experiences ever.
This book was just so not for me.
I have considerable eco-anxiety, and this book triggered me pretty badly (especially the third book). I was definitely not having a great time, and while I understand that it's important to know what will happen if we don't do anything about climate change, this was just too much for me.
I also think the idea behind this story might have been too ambitious. There was basically no connection between the three books (and if there was, it was never stated explicitly and you were left to figure it out on your own, which in some cases work, but it didn't in this one), which made me wonder what was the point of the book. I also felt like the author was withholding information about the world purposely just for the shock factor, which is not something that works well, in my opinion. I still have too many questions after finishing the book.
I also feel like the author might have taken the open endings too far. We never know how the first and the third book finish, which was so unsatisfying (especially when you stick through a 700 hundred-pages book in the hopes of having some kind of conclusion).
I do have to say the Book 2, Part 2 was great. I even cried at the end and for me, it was the highlight of the book. However, apart from that, it was unfortunately a miss for me.

Content Warnings