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A review by pascalthehoff
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
3.0
Since the three stories To Paradise consists of barely make for one coherent novel, I'm going to tackle each story separately right ahead:
1) The most simple one, a rather by-the-numbers love story. Its only merit and factor of distinction lies in its queer PoC characters as well as in its setting where queer PoC characters don't get treated like (real-life) queer PoCs would be. In this setting, the queer love story basically resembles a heteronormative one. This, I guess, has at least some appeal in itself. Also, making such a conventional love story work as well as this one does doesn't come easy. Still, in the end, there is really not a lot to cling onto here in hindsight.
2) The second one, being itself split into two rather disconnected timelines, was even more hit or miss for me. The AIDS epidemic story completely failed to grip me. Alright in concept, but way too long in execution. This also goes for the Hawaii timeline – with the big difference here being that the representation of mid-20th century Hawaiian struggle in itself was fresh enough to carry the story after its lengthy introduction.
3) Lengthiness is a crucial factor in the third story as well, it making up for almost half of the book. Creating this near-future pandemic/climate dystopia, the author uses the broadest brush possible. The number of catastrophes, subsequent problems and totalitarian measures (among all of these, many clichés) is so overwhelming, the third story left me devastated every night after reading. This version of our future is just plausible enough to invoke existential dread. The two timelines, this time more closely interconnected, work way better here, despite becoming rather redundant towards the end, with one timeline filling up details the other one has already sufficiently implied.
The biggest strengths of all three stories are their open-ended conclusions. It's like all three stories are merely a very intricate build-up towards each of their bittersweet tipping points on the respective final pages. Pretty strange, considering that up to these endings, To Paradise just loves to delve into detail.
With the exception of the vivid Hawaiian history lesson and the devastating impression the third story's dystopia leaves, To Paradise was relatively unremarkable for its length. A Little Life took its sweet time as well, but was overall more coherent and more compelling on a moment-to-moment basis – not only in its plot and characters, but in its very direct and evocative language as well, which seemed a bit more bloated in To Paradise.
To Paradise is a little all over the place, but is still unique enough to warrant a read if one is willing to put in the time. In the end, despite the lengths, I still feel like one could argue for the relevance of every single bit of each story – if one prefers stories that don't spare any detail.
1) The most simple one, a rather by-the-numbers love story. Its only merit and factor of distinction lies in its queer PoC characters as well as in its setting where queer PoC characters don't get treated like (real-life) queer PoCs would be. In this setting, the queer love story basically resembles a heteronormative one. This, I guess, has at least some appeal in itself. Also, making such a conventional love story work as well as this one does doesn't come easy. Still, in the end, there is really not a lot to cling onto here in hindsight.
2) The second one, being itself split into two rather disconnected timelines, was even more hit or miss for me. The AIDS epidemic story completely failed to grip me. Alright in concept, but way too long in execution. This also goes for the Hawaii timeline – with the big difference here being that the representation of mid-20th century Hawaiian struggle in itself was fresh enough to carry the story after its lengthy introduction.
3) Lengthiness is a crucial factor in the third story as well, it making up for almost half of the book. Creating this near-future pandemic/climate dystopia, the author uses the broadest brush possible. The number of catastrophes, subsequent problems and totalitarian measures (among all of these, many clichés) is so overwhelming, the third story left me devastated every night after reading. This version of our future is just plausible enough to invoke existential dread. The two timelines, this time more closely interconnected, work way better here, despite becoming rather redundant towards the end, with one timeline filling up details the other one has already sufficiently implied.
The biggest strengths of all three stories are their open-ended conclusions. It's like all three stories are merely a very intricate build-up towards each of their bittersweet tipping points on the respective final pages. Pretty strange, considering that up to these endings, To Paradise just loves to delve into detail.
With the exception of the vivid Hawaiian history lesson and the devastating impression the third story's dystopia leaves, To Paradise was relatively unremarkable for its length. A Little Life took its sweet time as well, but was overall more coherent and more compelling on a moment-to-moment basis – not only in its plot and characters, but in its very direct and evocative language as well, which seemed a bit more bloated in To Paradise.
To Paradise is a little all over the place, but is still unique enough to warrant a read if one is willing to put in the time. In the end, despite the lengths, I still feel like one could argue for the relevance of every single bit of each story – if one prefers stories that don't spare any detail.