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robert_thermopolis 's review for:
To Paradise
by Hanya Yanagihara
Like countless readers, I finished Hanya Yanagihara’s previous novel, the phenomenon that became “A Little Life” with a heavy flow of tears streaking my face. Upon rereading it, along with her first work “The People in the Trees” I’ve since fallen in love with Yanagihara’s prose. There’s something about the way she writes a sentence that just leaves me completely captivated. Because of this, I was beyond hyped up for her newest release “To Paradise” purchasing it on release day.
I had been warned by professional publications and BookTubers alike that this was not at all like “A Little Life” so while I wasn’t expecting a thematic sequel or anything similarly tragic (could the tragedy of her 2015 novel be topped? I’m afraid if I ask, Yanagihara will see it as a test and completely destroy my soul. As you’ve probably realized if you’ve made it far enough down the Goodreads page to see this review, “To Paradise” is divided into three sections, each serving as their own incomplete novel (or in the first two cases, novellas). While there are some connective threads like character names, settings, and motifs, each section, or book as they’re labeled in the novel, serve as their own incomplete story, yet I didn’t find any grand insight that interwove the three together.
The first book, Washington Square, follows a reimagined post Civil War North America where, while racism and classism still run rampant, same sex relationships are nothing at which society takes a second glance. This was probably my favorite section of the novel. The reimagined 1893 setting certainly gave off strong Henry James vibes (not surprising, given the section’s title) but with an exciting, queer element to it. If this were a stand alone novella, I would have confidently given it a solid 4 stars.
After initially hearing about the concept behind “To Paradise” I assumed that Book 2, Lipo-Wao-Nahele, set in New York City amidst the AIDS crisis of 1993, would be the most captivating. After all, Yanagihara has proven she can write sad gays like no one else. Imagine my surprise when I found this roughly 200 page section to be the biggest slog of the novel. Set amid a party of the elite, it followed a younger protagonist inside his much older and wealthier lover’s world as his lover deals with the impending deaths around him. While the prose was still lovely, the story itself was surprisingly slow and disengaging. The second half of Book 2 comes in the form of a letter from our protagonist’s father in Hawaii. It deals with colonialism, deforestation, the loss of one’s significance, and other seemingly interesting themes, but in a way I didn’t find particularly engaging. If Lipo-Wao-Nahele was its own standalone novella, I would give it a tepid 1.5 stars.
Book 3 of “To Paradise,” titled Zone Eight, takes up roughly half the novel’s 700 page length. Set in an imagined 2093, this section follows a female protagonist living in a peculiar, almost totalitarian world ravaged by plagues and pandemics. The section alternates between 2093 and decades-old letters from our protagonist’s grandfather, exploring the slow but steady increase of near-fascism as the world struggles to regain some sense of normalcy and control. Reading this on the verge of Year Three of this current pandemic, of course, made the parallels stand out and the grim reality of the situation seem much more feasible than it would have before we entered March of 2020. This section definitely qualifies as soft science fiction, as Yanagihara thrust the readers into the end of the 21st century and expects context clues to fill in the plethora of blanks. While this is preferable to block-of-text-info-dumping, I felt some middle ground could have been met, where the world could be established more clearly and definitely. I suspect this issue wouldn’t reappear if I were to reread this novel in a few years but, to the honest, I don’t see a reread of “To Paradise” in my near future. In summation, if this section served as a standalone novel, I would give it a solid three out of five stars.
While Yanagihara’s sentence structure and verbiage is, as always, lovely and a pleasure to read on its own, the overarching story-- if you could really call it that-- felt lacking to say the least. Rather than a traditional narrative, each of these three “books” are self contained, and while character names repeat throughout, they don’t appear to be any correlation. I’ve read interviews with Yanagihara discussing the deployment of this technique. She said, in essence, it was her way of beginning a conversation about the conventions of naming and how society uses names to restructure the present and the future, but it really didn’t work at all for me. Rather, it added an extra level of confusion.
If there’s a single theme that rings throughout all three elements of “To Paradise” I would say it’s passivity. Each section, and each narrator within the section, is dealing with the idea of different possibilities. At the start, each protagonist is, more or less, in a state of passivity. In Book 1, David is living an uncomplicated but privileged wife with his grandfather in his Washington Square home when the possibility of an intriguing young lover leads him to questioning his arranged engagement with a much older suitor. Should he continue his privileged life as it’s laid out before him, or will he embark on a potentially perilous journey to paradise. Book 2’s version of David is living with his much older lover, who receives a letter from his past, interrupting a final party for his lover’s dying friend amongst the AIDS epidemic. David internally muses about whether his newer, privileged life is a façade when compared to his more bohemian upbringing, including his friend Eden, and if Hawaii would serve him better than his current life affords. Book 3 follows a woman who questions whether the almost-totalitarian government she lives within is the best possible option, or if she should potentially escape.
With a full century between each story, the reader is guided only with brief maps delineating at the alternate history with maps on the inside cover of the book, detailing the differentiations between our real world. Another, perhaps even more detrimental element to my enjoyment of this novel was the lack of resolution for each of the stories. While I don’t necessarily need every plot thread nicely tied up, each of the three stories just seem to end on cliff hangers that don’t get resolved or really alluded to. I understand what she’s trying to do with this, but I didn’t find the tantalization of a potential “paradise” conclusive enough to end each section.
Overall, I have to say I was disappointed by “To Paradise” even going in trying my hardest to tamper expectations so I understood it was not going to be like “A Little Life.” Sure, there is an element of depression in Book 1 that, at brief moments, comes close to the grief explored in her spellbinding second novel and Book 3 features scientists, allowing her to write about the research process within the scientific community, similarly to her debut “The People in the Trees.” However, this novel did not reach the heights of either of Yanagihara’s previous works. Collectively, I’m going to settle on a 3 star rating from rounding up the average of the three different books because of Yanagihara’s beautiful, evocative yet simple writing style.
I had been warned by professional publications and BookTubers alike that this was not at all like “A Little Life” so while I wasn’t expecting a thematic sequel or anything similarly tragic (could the tragedy of her 2015 novel be topped? I’m afraid if I ask, Yanagihara will see it as a test and completely destroy my soul. As you’ve probably realized if you’ve made it far enough down the Goodreads page to see this review, “To Paradise” is divided into three sections, each serving as their own incomplete novel (or in the first two cases, novellas). While there are some connective threads like character names, settings, and motifs, each section, or book as they’re labeled in the novel, serve as their own incomplete story, yet I didn’t find any grand insight that interwove the three together.
The first book, Washington Square, follows a reimagined post Civil War North America where, while racism and classism still run rampant, same sex relationships are nothing at which society takes a second glance. This was probably my favorite section of the novel. The reimagined 1893 setting certainly gave off strong Henry James vibes (not surprising, given the section’s title) but with an exciting, queer element to it. If this were a stand alone novella, I would have confidently given it a solid 4 stars.
After initially hearing about the concept behind “To Paradise” I assumed that Book 2, Lipo-Wao-Nahele, set in New York City amidst the AIDS crisis of 1993, would be the most captivating. After all, Yanagihara has proven she can write sad gays like no one else. Imagine my surprise when I found this roughly 200 page section to be the biggest slog of the novel. Set amid a party of the elite, it followed a younger protagonist inside his much older and wealthier lover’s world as his lover deals with the impending deaths around him. While the prose was still lovely, the story itself was surprisingly slow and disengaging. The second half of Book 2 comes in the form of a letter from our protagonist’s father in Hawaii. It deals with colonialism, deforestation, the loss of one’s significance, and other seemingly interesting themes, but in a way I didn’t find particularly engaging. If Lipo-Wao-Nahele was its own standalone novella, I would give it a tepid 1.5 stars.
Book 3 of “To Paradise,” titled Zone Eight, takes up roughly half the novel’s 700 page length. Set in an imagined 2093, this section follows a female protagonist living in a peculiar, almost totalitarian world ravaged by plagues and pandemics. The section alternates between 2093 and decades-old letters from our protagonist’s grandfather, exploring the slow but steady increase of near-fascism as the world struggles to regain some sense of normalcy and control. Reading this on the verge of Year Three of this current pandemic, of course, made the parallels stand out and the grim reality of the situation seem much more feasible than it would have before we entered March of 2020. This section definitely qualifies as soft science fiction, as Yanagihara thrust the readers into the end of the 21st century and expects context clues to fill in the plethora of blanks. While this is preferable to block-of-text-info-dumping, I felt some middle ground could have been met, where the world could be established more clearly and definitely. I suspect this issue wouldn’t reappear if I were to reread this novel in a few years but, to the honest, I don’t see a reread of “To Paradise” in my near future. In summation, if this section served as a standalone novel, I would give it a solid three out of five stars.
While Yanagihara’s sentence structure and verbiage is, as always, lovely and a pleasure to read on its own, the overarching story-- if you could really call it that-- felt lacking to say the least. Rather than a traditional narrative, each of these three “books” are self contained, and while character names repeat throughout, they don’t appear to be any correlation. I’ve read interviews with Yanagihara discussing the deployment of this technique. She said, in essence, it was her way of beginning a conversation about the conventions of naming and how society uses names to restructure the present and the future, but it really didn’t work at all for me. Rather, it added an extra level of confusion.
If there’s a single theme that rings throughout all three elements of “To Paradise” I would say it’s passivity. Each section, and each narrator within the section, is dealing with the idea of different possibilities. At the start, each protagonist is, more or less, in a state of passivity. In Book 1, David is living an uncomplicated but privileged wife with his grandfather in his Washington Square home when the possibility of an intriguing young lover leads him to questioning his arranged engagement with a much older suitor. Should he continue his privileged life as it’s laid out before him, or will he embark on a potentially perilous journey to paradise. Book 2’s version of David is living with his much older lover, who receives a letter from his past, interrupting a final party for his lover’s dying friend amongst the AIDS epidemic. David internally muses about whether his newer, privileged life is a façade when compared to his more bohemian upbringing, including his friend Eden, and if Hawaii would serve him better than his current life affords. Book 3 follows a woman who questions whether the almost-totalitarian government she lives within is the best possible option, or if she should potentially escape.
With a full century between each story, the reader is guided only with brief maps delineating at the alternate history with maps on the inside cover of the book, detailing the differentiations between our real world. Another, perhaps even more detrimental element to my enjoyment of this novel was the lack of resolution for each of the stories. While I don’t necessarily need every plot thread nicely tied up, each of the three stories just seem to end on cliff hangers that don’t get resolved or really alluded to. I understand what she’s trying to do with this, but I didn’t find the tantalization of a potential “paradise” conclusive enough to end each section.
Overall, I have to say I was disappointed by “To Paradise” even going in trying my hardest to tamper expectations so I understood it was not going to be like “A Little Life.” Sure, there is an element of depression in Book 1 that, at brief moments, comes close to the grief explored in her spellbinding second novel and Book 3 features scientists, allowing her to write about the research process within the scientific community, similarly to her debut “The People in the Trees.” However, this novel did not reach the heights of either of Yanagihara’s previous works. Collectively, I’m going to settle on a 3 star rating from rounding up the average of the three different books because of Yanagihara’s beautiful, evocative yet simple writing style.