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frazzle 's review for:
To Paradise
by Hanya Yanagihara
I've heard from SO many people how devastated they were by A Little Life. Although I can't say I felt any particularly strong emotion while reading this book, what's clear is Yanagihara's knack of drawing the reader into her worlds. I'll tackle her back catalogue once I'm ready to face another 700 pager...
To Paradisehas a nifty structure, centring around a single stately house in New York as the sands of two centuries (late 19th to late 21st) shift around it. Something very Cloud Atlas about the way we slowly work out how each section relates to the previous. Its perceptions about the circularities of history are astute and not overstated (as David Mitchell's might be). I liked the way her writing style shifts ever so slightly between each of the three books - the first expansive with clause piled upon clause, the last clinical, in a coming age where words are dangerous.
She imagines how what it means to be human might change across this time. Relationships of all kinds are examined, not only gay male ones - characters find themselves unable to argue with love and its illogicalities. She also weighs in on the plight of indigenous peoples. Maybe there's just too many huge issues packed into this book for it to hold together.
Her interest in loners and people who are slightly socially maladapted reminded me a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro. There's something about the observational standpoint of outsiders looking in that both writers play with so well.
Its third book imagines a near future America where some of the big ticket problems of the past few years - pandemics, big brother, climate disaster, and authoritarianism - are imagined frighteningly believably. Very Klara and the Sun - the quiet desperation at the world our children's children might inherit, narrated with such eloquence and integrity.
But in the same way I enjoyed Klara least out of Ishiguro's books, I think To Paradise is just a bit too sci-fi for my liking. Book Three had a very cool pincer structure, so the reader learns about this new age from gradually from two different perspectives and times - but it meant it was nearly 350 pages, about 150 too long.
Like other books that involve several narrators and time shifts, I think I'll remember the experience of reading this book more than the story itself.
To Paradisehas a nifty structure, centring around a single stately house in New York as the sands of two centuries (late 19th to late 21st) shift around it. Something very Cloud Atlas about the way we slowly work out how each section relates to the previous. Its perceptions about the circularities of history are astute and not overstated (as David Mitchell's might be). I liked the way her writing style shifts ever so slightly between each of the three books - the first expansive with clause piled upon clause, the last clinical, in a coming age where words are dangerous.
She imagines how what it means to be human might change across this time. Relationships of all kinds are examined, not only gay male ones - characters find themselves unable to argue with love and its illogicalities. She also weighs in on the plight of indigenous peoples. Maybe there's just too many huge issues packed into this book for it to hold together.
Her interest in loners and people who are slightly socially maladapted reminded me a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro. There's something about the observational standpoint of outsiders looking in that both writers play with so well.
Its third book imagines a near future America where some of the big ticket problems of the past few years - pandemics, big brother, climate disaster, and authoritarianism - are imagined frighteningly believably. Very Klara and the Sun - the quiet desperation at the world our children's children might inherit, narrated with such eloquence and integrity.
But in the same way I enjoyed Klara least out of Ishiguro's books, I think To Paradise is just a bit too sci-fi for my liking. Book Three had a very cool pincer structure, so the reader learns about this new age from gradually from two different perspectives and times - but it meant it was nearly 350 pages, about 150 too long.
Like other books that involve several narrators and time shifts, I think I'll remember the experience of reading this book more than the story itself.