Hanya Yanagihara’s ‘To Paradise’ is an immersive commentary on the American experiment

I started To Paradise as a completely new reader of Hanya Yanagihara’s work. Of course, I’d heard of her massively acclaimed A Little Life. And the premise of To Paradise sounded very much like my cup of tea. So, I jumped at the chance to experience Yanagihara’s prose for myself when the opportunity arose.

The premise in question: To Paradise is a book in three parts (I wouldn’t quite say it’s a story in three parts). Each part, or “Book”, takes place in New York – a city I love – at the end of a century: the 19th, the 20th, and the 21st. It’s a nuanced commentary on the American experiment, but the themes at the forefront are family, loss, and love. Though the sections, being separated by a hundred years each, do not deal in the same characters, themes recur and harmonise with each other.

When I first read the book description, I wasn’t particularly drawn to one of the three plots more than the others – I thought that, though different, all three sounded compelling. However, reading them was a different story, and having finished the novel, it is Book One that remains my favourite. The downside of this is, of course, that since Book One is only the first 25% of the novel, the rest didn’t quite live up to it. Book Three has an edge over Book Two for me, but it still didn’t capture me or make me as invested in the characters as Book One did.

My main quibble with the structure, however, is that it meant that at times it felt like I was reading three novels instead of one cohesive work. Yes, there are recurring themes, and I loved the way that Yanagihara gave the characters in each part the same names as this made me ponder on the overarching themes and look for repeating patterns. But it meant that, especially after Book One, I had some trouble forming an emotional connection with the characters we were following. This was heightened by the lack of explicit links between the characters of each section and the open endings to each. By Book Three, these loose ends became frustrating – I believe I might have even exclaimed seriously? when this happened in Book Three.

Each part also has a different setup in terms of plot. Book One is a historical drama that follows David Bingham (the first of five Davids in the novel), who is torn between his family and the duty that he feels towards them and his feelings for a man below his social class. I found the alternative America that Yanagihara devised here to be so clever –the North-eastern states of the US form their own country, which is fairly liberal in terms of gender, but is gradually revealed to be regressive about race, class, and migration. Book Two, on the other hand, is quite similar to the US we know, and deals with the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s. And Book Three is a dystopian view of an America once again fragmented into different countries, ravaged by pandemics, and becoming growingly oppressive of its citizens, from the 2040s to the 2090s.

Yanagihara’s commentary on the American experiment and the failings of the US as a country was very well executed. It was subtle – particularly in Book One – but sharp, and I think my main thematic takeaway has been on the people that progressive activism and the American experiment have left behind. As one of the characters says, “America is a country with sin at its heart.” There’s also some eerily prescient commentary on climate change and pandemics, given that the book was written before 2020.

The prose, I thought, was lovely, immersive. I bookmarked several pages because so many passages took my breath away that if I put them all into this review, I’d probably end up with a full-length novella. One that stuck with me, about the longing of new love, was from Book One: “if [David] could not have Edward in his arms, he wanted Edward’s name on his tongue; by speaking of him, he would bring Edward alive.” However, at points it lagged, and I felt like Books Two and Three could definitely have been shorter, especially in the second, stream-of-consciousness section of Book Two and Charlie’s section of Book Three.

Would I recommend To Paradise? Of course – to patient readers up for over 700 pages of novel who do not mind some loose ends, and who want to consider the concept and history at the heart of the US.

To Paradise is the much anticipated new release from Hanya Yanagihara and it is an ambitious and bold undertaking.
The book is broken into three sections, each set 100 years in the future from the preceding one, starting in 1893 in an alternative version of America where in the "Free States" same sex marriages are the norm, especially amongst the wealthy elite where they are used to secure inheritances. Young bachelor and scion of a wealthy family, Charles Bingham is being encouraged by his grandfather to form a match with a suitable suitor, but is distracted by an attractive, if perhaps less worthy and certainly less wealthy music teacher.
In 1993 New York is in the grip of the AIDS epidemic and we meet David, a paralegal who is romantically involved with a senior partner at the firm he works in, while his father is unwell back home in Hawaii.
The final and longest section is set in dystopian future version of New York. In 2093 the world has faced multiple pandemics, and much of the nations resources are diverted into studying them, fighting them and preparing for the next one. Charlie in this world is a young woman who suffered damage as the result of an experimental treatment give to her as a girl. Labelled as infertile she is part of an arranged marriage to a man who is kind but disinterested.
Though the three sections seem very different at first, it was really enjoyable to see the recurrent themes as they unfolded. I particularly enjoyed the first and third sections, I found the second a little more of a struggle to engage with. Having previously read A Little Life, I was expecting more of an emotional connection , which I did not find in this book. I could appreciate the skill of the writing and the ambition of the book as a whole but I did not love it as much as I hoped.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I read To Paradise between Christmas and New Year as more Covid restrictions were kicking in and many of the themes in this book were resonating and rattling round as questions in my head.

To Paradise is an epic work. In three sections, Yanagihara tackles some immense topics which ultimately lead you to question notions of freedom and freedom of choice and what we as society do to each other in that name. Though this book is about love, family, protection and choices, it is also – especially in the third section – a pandemic novel, so be warned.

To Paradise spans three centuries and centres around one house in Washington Square. In an opening reminiscent of Henry James’ The Ambassadors and Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, this mannered society is one in which arranged marriages are the norm, though there’s a moment when you realise that this society is one in which gay arranged marriages are completely accepted, and that makes you blink.

David Bingham lives with his wealthy grandfather, Nathaniel. A sickly child, his illnesses are not spoken of and must be concealed from potential suitors. Gay marriage may be welcomed in this 1893, but class and wealth play just as strong a role as ever they did and the suitability of eligible partners is still paramount. This part of free America is racist though; it does not non-Europeans as citizens except and former black slaves from the South are encouraged to move on to the North or the West. And so we follow David, torn between pleasing his grandfather by contracting to marry Charles and inheriting all that he holds dear and holding out for the most unsuitable of matches which everyone but David can see will end in tears.

The second section, set in 1990’s New York is poignant and takes us to a group of affluent men gathering to say goodbye to a dear friend, now dying of terminal cancer but who is mightily relieved not to be dying of a disease which is rife amongst their friends. This disease, characterised by skin lesions, often burned off in an attempt to avoid the stigma, is all too clearly Aids. David Bingham a paralegal, (not the same one, names are repeated in this triptych) is having an affair with his firm’s senior partner Charles. David is a young Hawaiian man whose father, descended from royal blood, is dying in an institution on the island and this is his story, sometimes told by him and at others it is his father’s monologue which drives the narrative. Yanagihara shows us an uncompromising America colonising Hawaii, oppressing its peoples and stealing the land and customs. In doing so it has created a society in which the people are conflicted, angry and suffer greatly from no longer knowing or understanding their rich heritage. The darkness suffered by the Hawaiians is suffused through their mental health and disintegration of collective memory.

Cue then, the third section of this triptych, taking place in2094 with flashbacks, in an America which is scarily recognisable. This is the pandemic section and strikes a chord with all of us who have lived through three lockdowns so far. Here is a society which has been crushed by a series of viruses and whose efforts are now entirely directed at predicting and curing the next wave.

Everything is directed in pursuit of these aims and in the process Yanagihara portrays a totalitarian regime in which any joy has been removed and freedom no longer exists. Charlie lives in New York with her remote husband. Partners each have a free evening and Charlie is curious about where her husband spends his. As she tells her story, we learn about her background and through her grandfather Charles’ letters to Peter, a member of the UK Government. A promising scientist he allows the virus to corrupt his ideals from mass protection of the public to the creation of internment camps for the sick and their families. Soon it is only the well-connected in Government and the wealthy that are likely to survive. And so procreation becomes important as the population diminishes, leading to an eradication of every freedom that Americans have enjoyed. His son, though, cannot ignore his stirrings of discontent and becomes a vocal dissenter.

This America is one in which a combination of lack of freedoms because of inequality, climate change and pandemics has produced a society in which life holds little joy or freedom and life is brutal because of the ‘national emergency’. It is not at all difficult to extrapolate today’s world from the futuristic warnings in To Paradise, and though I cannot go along the logical trajectory that Yanagihara lays out, the warnings are clear

What the reader is left with is that thought about possibilities. What are the choices we make along every road? How could one small decision change the course of society and the worlds we live in? Because she has used the same names, the possibilities are counterpointed and each of these Davids and Charlies have cause to question what could have been different. What has been sacrificed in the cause of so called safety and what freedoms are they prepared to give up – and why?

Verdict: I said at the start of this review that this book had echoes of James and Wharton. By the end though, it felt a bit more like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Looking backwards to examine choices made and forwards to see the consequences of those choices. To Paradise is a massive, dizzying work on a huge scale that asks some very big questions pertinent to the choices we make for the future. It’s immersive, complex, finely layered, sometimes repellent and utterly absorbing. It’s rather beautifully and compellingly expressed and is one you’ll be thinking about for years to come.

I cannot give anything less than 5 stars because this novel - this piece of work - is brilliant. This is either an epic novel, or three novels in one, take your pick., but settle down and focus because you'll need to. There are three different time frames (nineteenth, twentieth and way-in-the-future twenty-first century) exploring, really, life. Or, life and culture, or being human, or free-will, or science, biology - or all of those things. The complexity is soothed by Yanagihara's hypnotic prose style and if you keep in mind that it's those complex themes that link the three parts together, rather than the characters, or the names, then you'll get it. If you try to do ancestry work, you're on the wrong track.

There's no doubt that 'A Little Life' is a hard act to follow but I don't think 'To Paradise' fails. There are some similarities in the way the characters are drawn - their loneliness, for instance - but it's not so drawn out, and anyway, the emphasis is elsewhere here. This is not another '...Little Life', how could it be? Don't expect that. But do expect mesmeric prose and excruciatingly thought-provoking themes.

I loved that this felt like 3 separate stories but with similar names and themes throughout. The first book was a heart-breaking period piece, the second a modern tale of AIDS and the third a sci-fi dystopian fable perfect for our times. I adored A Little Life but To Paradise is practically perfect in every way. It really stayed with me and I look forward to what Hanya has next for us!

Another outstanding novel by this author. Hanya has a unique and innate talent to bring the characters, from her novels, to life. This novel, like her previous ‘A Little Life’, is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Stunning, moving and unforgettable.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for granting this eARC request.

Just to start, I am absolutely honoured to have been approved for this book. A Little Life is in my top books of all time, and I had preordered To Paradise the second I heard of its existence.

Hanya Yanagihara has a reputation for truly devastating books. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten over A Little Life, one of the greatest books of the last decade. She’s also known for very long books.

To Paradise is definitely long. I’m a pretty quick reader but it took me a week during a period when I was off work. According to my kindle it took me 15 hours in total to read.

The book is split into 3 time periods - post-civil war New York, New York in the 1980s and post-2040 New York, all the way to the 2080s. The stories are tied together but not necessarily connected, and each contain characters with the same name. The world of these eras are all slightly different from our world, the notable difference being men and women are allowed to marry anyone, regardless of gender.

I really loved the first two sections of the book, the second one in particular, and I was disappointed to not be returning to those characters in later chapters. The final section. which lasts over half of the book, was my least favourite, set in a futuristic world ravaged by pandemics.

One thing to note - there’s been a lot of pandemic-themed books coming out lately and I personally am not here for it.

I did really like this book. Yanigahara is masterful at writing characters and relationships and I really like a lot of what she has done here. It reminded me a lot of Klara and the Sun towards the end, another book I really liked but did not love.

Is it anything like A Little Life? No, not really at all. I don’t think many books will have the effect that one had on me and this certainly didn’t. Is it a good book? Yes, but not sure it’s one I will remember, apart from spending 15 hours with it.

I really really appreciate getting this read this one early, and I can’t wait to follow the discourse when it’s released.

4 stars

Yanagihara’s writing does not disappoint in this ambitious exploration of the American project. Unafraid to tackle any topical issues, from racism to climate change, from authoritarianism to pandemics, ‘To Paradise’ takes the reader on an emotional journey spanning over three centuries.

While remaining true to her trademarked grimness, personal drama here gives way to a broader exploration of American identity in what I have no doubt will become another modern masterpiece. 10/10

I see many a mixed review for this one, and I think half of that comes from going into it hoping it’s going to be just like A Little Life and wanting your experience to be the same, whereas for those who have also read The People in the Trees, we know this not to be the case for all of Yanagihara’s work, so therefore this should be judged as it’s own thing
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I loved this so much, the world building Yanagihara creates is truly wonderful and the epic story is told between multiple timelines almost splitting the book into 3 books. I don’t want to say too much, which is unhelpful for a review, but I urge to read this if you enjoy Yanagihara’s work, but please I beg you please, don’t go in thinking you’re getting the same as previous works and don’t compare to previous works, and I trust you will leave this enjoying the book, if not that but having a good conversation about it. I think it will be polarising in the best way.
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Thank you to Netgalley & PanMacmillan for the ARC

I loved A Little Life so I was looking forward to getting to grips with another big book by Hanya Yanagihara.

To Paradise tells three stories of a family, each a hundred years apart. It begins in 1893, in a subtly altered New York. A privileged but lonely young man, troubled by illness, is trying to choose between two potential suitors – one representing security and respectability, the other danger and passion.

In this version of history, New York is an independent state, and people are free to marry others of their own sex. The protagonist lives with his grandfather, cosseted but controlled, in a Washington Square mansion. His precarious condition might have been called hysteria, in a story often told about a woman at this period, so it’s an interesting twist to have it from a male perspective.

Although the man’s dilemma is a familiar one, it was nicely done and I enjoyed this part of To Paradise. The lives of the characters were vividly created (reading it reminded me a little of The Great Mistake which covers a similar period and themes). The world it portrays is at once recognisable and strange.

However, I lost my way in the second part, set in 1993. It begins with the story of a young gay man and his older partner, also living in Washington Square, confronting the AIDS crisis among their friends. The story is later taken up by the father of the New York protagonist in Hawai’i. He muses on their relationship, his own family history and its links to that of Hawai’i, and how his temperament and choices have influenced his son.

This story was less absorbing than the nineteenth century one. While the details about the political history of Hawai’i were interesting (and sent me to Wikipedia to learn what was real and what made up), the world of 1993 New York in To Paradise felt (overly) familiar. Surely if you change one thing, everything changes? The story of the father also repeats a lot of what we learn from the son.

In the final section, we get a glimpse of a future where a mysterious virus and fear of it are a constant background noise. In this world, shortages are common, hierarchy is enforced and sexuality is strictly policed. This future world felt like it needed to be more fully realised. It also had a complicated structure of chapters narrated by a protagonist in the ‘present’ of 2093, interspersed with letters from an (initially) unknown writer in an earlier period.

It’s a fine line between subtly highlighting thematic echoes across three centuries and bludgeoning your reader over the head with more of the same, and I’m not sure Yanagihara got it right here. All the stories feature illness and disease, the conflicting need for love and safety, the constraints of privilege, the demands and rewards of family and community. The names of the main characters are recycled through the three stories which adds to the samey feel. It’s also very wordy with some repetitive passages that could have been cut.

Each of the stories ends unresolved, with the characters moving towards an unknown future. The links between them aren’t tied up (though there are tantalising hints). Paradise, for character and reader alike, remains out of reach.
*
I received a copy of To Paradise from the publisher via Netgalley.

I think perhaps I might have missed the big point of this book. To me, it read more like three books with little connection other than character names, emotions and similar themes. I have never read this author before so I'm not comparing it to A Little Life which, despite me not connecting with this book, is still on my TBR.
We start in 1893 with David resisting an arranged marriage to a connected individual, instead he is drawn to someone most unsuitable in his family's eyes. We leave the story unresolved but hopeful.
We then move to 1993 during the Aids epidemic where we follow a different David who is in a relationship with an older man.
Part three takes us into a rather interesting future time and is split into a dual timeline. We follow a married lady who is a victim of her father's past and who is in a strained marriage. We also then follow her grandfather and learn of the events which shaped his granddaughter's life.
As I said, these three were, to me, simply separate stories. Ok so there were some of the same names but not the same characters so I am not sure of the point there. There were also reoccurring themes throughout the book, but again, not enough in my eyes to connect the three tales. Which were also not really concluded at all to my satisfaction. I was really hoping that there would be a part four which brought it all together but sadly, that wasn't to be.
As I said at the start, I probably just missed the point. But I can see from reading other reviews that this is going to be a bit of a marmite book. It wasn't for me but I can see that it was for others and, well, that's the beauty of books...
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This is a breathtaking read, skilfully written and moving from start to finish. The story is split into three loosely connected parts, showing different aspects of life in New York in three different eras, and the lived experiences of the people of the time.

The first two sections of the book are based in an early 1800s New York where everything is possible if you have money and there is a lot of freedom, then based in 1980s New York where the AIDS epidemic has a severe impact. The third section of the book is the longest and the most disturbing, set in a near future where previous freedoms have been curtailed and life is reduced to basic survival through epidemics and civil unrest.

The individual stories are so absorbing, with many characters whose experience resonates deeply. The third section in particular doesn't look away from despair, but it also looks to survival. And what an ending - superb.

More a series of linked pieces than a conventional novel, Hanya Yanagihara explores different versions of America moving from 1893 to 1993 and, finally 2093. Each of the three main sections contains echoes of the one before: a specific house in Washington Square; the naming of key players; shared themes around concepts of freedom, trust and self-determination; and the force of familial and social bonds. Although, ultimately, it’s very much a plot-driven piece. The first part owes more than a passing debt to Henry James’s Washington Square except his unworldly, diffident heroine becomes a young, male heir, David Bingham, who falls for someone who may or may not be a fortune hunter. Yanagihara draws on a history of widespread Utopian groups in nineteenth-century America for her portrayal of David’s life in New York. It’s 1893, New York is an independent state in a bitterly divided country, notable for the centrality of gay and lesbian marriage, and a society that challenges traditional gender roles. Yet this sense of liberty and progressiveness is undermined by the fact that it’s still a place founded on genocide, social inequality and racial segregation.

In the middle sections, James’s story again resurfaces, but this time the character of David’s Hawaiian in a world more closely resembling reality, living in Washington Square with his older, wealthier partner Charles. Their plotline’s interrupted by flashbacks to the life of David’s father, a descendent of the last Hawaiian monarch, and yet another figure who sees the promise of rescue in someone else, someone who appears to offer a new, better life. The more substantial, final section alternates between different times and character perspectives, featuring a scientist Charles and his granddaughter Charlie, with much of Charles’s story revealed in a series of confessional letters. There’s a distinctly Atwoodian feel to these last episodes, set in a dystopia brought about by climate change and the aftermath of a series of pandemics and epidemics, each more deadly than the one before, all of which’s contributed to the rise of a bleak, totalitarian state.

Yanagihara’s ‘what if’ narrative’s clearly invested in raising concerns about America as a nation: what it has been, what it might have been and what it could be. Yanagihara makes connections between the concept, or the possibility, of personal freedom and the long-standing fantasy of America as the land of the free, questioning what individual freedom might look like and at whose expense it might be bought. But as the book unfolded these broader, semi-philosophical issues seemed increasingly buried, overwhelmed by Yanagihara’s highly detailed, increasingly complex storylines. It’s a fairly absorbing, inventive piece even, at times, quite a moving one but I’m not sure it’s entirely convincing or coherent. The sections don’t quite hang together and frequently felt a little stretched out, enough that I had to resist the urge to skim ahead. Many of Yanagihara’s key points repeat across the book, in part to tie disparate sections together, but sometimes these repetitions seemed redundant, with too much space given over to outlining the territory to be explored and not enough to developing the underlying ideas and arguments. I thought it was definitely worth the time I invested in it but not as satisfying a read as it might have been.

Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Picador for an arc

Rating: 3/3.5

Rarely have I been more excited for a book than for Hanya Yanagihara's new work. I haven't read her "A Little Life" mostly because I heard about how depressing and heartbreaking it is and I just haven't been in the right mental place for a book like this for a long while. But people were mostly raving about it, about the gorgeous prose, the impact of this work. So I couldn't wait to dive right into Yanigahara's "To Paradise".

And I now know why people are raving about her writing. The prose is as gorgeous as expected, vivid and boderline lyrical. The sentence flow is so natural that it draws you in immediately and I couldn't stop reading. The recurring motifs in the three parts of this novel are expertly woven in. Yanighara is an exceptional, and exceptionally talented, writer.

The aforementioned three parts of the novel could have been their own books, quite frankly. Part I takes place at the end of the 19th century in an alternate reality America where a new state, the Free States, have emerged. Slavery has been abolished, same sex marriage is completely accepted (and seems to be the norm, really). It tells the story of New York bachelor David who is being set up for an arranged marriage with an older man when he falls in love with another young man who might or might not have ulterior motives.
Part II takes place at the end of the 20th century, where another David has been dating a 30 years older man. David is a Hawaiian in New York with a complicated history with his father, who tells his story through an egregriously long letter to his son.
Part III,. which is by far the longest part and makes up about half of the entire novel, takes place yet another 100 years later at the end of the 21st century. It's set in a kind-of-dystopian New York and in a world ruled by climate crisis and deadly pandemics. This time, while there are once again Davids playing a role in the story, the protagonists are a girl named Charlie and, through letters,. her grandfather Charles.
Each part contains obviously much more than this short synopsis might lead you to believe, but that's the general gist of it.

There are, as said before, recurring motifs: names, places (the setting is always New York), themes (love, identity, loss, illness, freedom, to name a few). But still, it seems like all of these parts could have worked as a novel all on their own, and they never really form a whole entity. The throwbacks (like a storyteller in Part III that tells the story of Part I) are quite fun to read, but in the end don't really add much to the experience, to the story as a whole.

I've heard a lot about how emotionally engaging the author's work is, so I was expecting to be, well, emotionally engaged. While there are parts of the story that did touch me, as a whole I was more mesmerized by the writing itself than any emotions the story might evoke. That's probably because my emotional engagement with any story tends to be tied to the characters, and I never really quite connected with either of them. They were interesting to read about, but I never felt like I had real insight into who they were. The recurring names didn't help either.
I do have to say that I wasn't really that invested in Part I, but it was short enough to keep me from being bored. Part II is probably my favorite - at least the part that focuses on David's Hawaiian father and his story. Part III is tediously long, though, and while the premise is an intriguing one, especially now we're living through our own pandemic, there's just so much going on at such a slow pace that I had to actively keep myself from skipping pages. The switch to a first person narrator was a little weird at first, admittedly, but I got used to it. And again, places and names are being reused but it just didn't make sense to me. These people have nothing in common with their counterparts in the first two parts, so why even choose to do this? On the grand scale, it didn't add anything substantial to the book except maybe the guessing of "who might xy be in this part of the story", which isn't really that exciting. It seemed like a forced layer of faux complexity.

And then there is the fact of the abrupt and entirely open endings of Part I and III. Listen, open endings can be done so well. Yes, there's always some frustration involved because we want to know the details of everything, but if done well, an open ending inspires thought and reflection and satisfies the reader without giving them all the answers. These are the kinds of endings that don't need a prologue or an explanation because the conclusion feels natural and fits with the tone of the book.
In this case, it's just an abrupt ending that feels entirely unsatisfying and inspires nothing more than wondering whether I just wasted a lot of time reading this doorstopper of the book. Yes, it's supposed to be bleak, but there's a difference between bleak and just plain mean. Quite frankly, there is absolutely no need to end not one, but two of three parts of the book in a completely open, uninspiring way. I was pretty frustrated and rolling my eyes when I came to the ending of Part III. Yanagihara even teases a proper ending for Part I in said Part III, as if to dangle a carrot in front of the readers but then snatch it away with an evil witchy laugh. These endings only exist to frustrate and cause the readers, who invested quite a lot of time into reading this long beast of a book, that delicious pain authors seem to like so much nowadays. I just honestly do not see any narrative, structural or thematical reason to provide such non-endings in this particular book.

Still, to end on a positive note, reading <i>To Paradise<i> is an experience for sure. The writing style is gorgeous, the themes maybe a little too numerous but intriguing and hard-hitting. It is not the tearjerker I know many of Yanagihara's fans are expecting it to be, but it is a solid work - it just didn't manage to emotionally engage me the way it will definitely do a lot of other readers.

I'd give this a 3 star rating, though it's leaning more heavily towards a 2,5 for me.

The publication of Yanagihara’s follow-up to her uncompromising but magnificent tome A Little Life was always going to be a significant event. So impactful was her last novel on me that I consider it one of the finest books I’ve ever read. So, could her new book deliver a similar sized punch?

It’s another monster, at over seven hundred pages, and is broken up into three main sections (well, in reality four as book 2 is really two stories set in the same timeframe). Book 1 takes place in the very late 19th Century and the other sections are each set a century further on in time. I kept looking for linkages between the stories but in truth these seem tenuous: a house in Greenwich Village features in all of them and many of the character names are repeated in each tale, but as we travel through time it seems that this is about as far it goes. We seem destined to move on to a new world with its own distinct history as we progress through this book.

In the first section we are introduced to a rich businessman and his grandson, to whom it is hoped his business empire will in time pass. It’s clear that same sex marriage is commonplace (though discrimination between races does exist) and indeed throughout this whole book most of the characters are married and gay. The grandfather is attempting to broker an arranged marriage for his grandson but in the meantime the younger man begins an affair with a poor music teacher.

The second section follows the fate of a young paralegal working for a large law firm in New York. The Aids pandemic is in full flow and a group of friends are saying goodbye to a member of their group who is dying of ‘boring old’ cancer. And in a separate strand we meet the ailing father of the paralegal who is a descendent of the Hawaiian royal family.

Section three is by far the largest, taking up half of the whole novel. In a dystopian New York, overrun by an ongoing series of ever worsening pandemics, we follow the fate of a number of characters as they battle to survive in what has become a harsh totalitarian state. Anyone familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will identify with the differing factors motivating the various protagonists, though it seems that all are ultimately headed for the bottom tier.

Where the author truly shines is in her descriptions of the full range of emotions felt by her cast. Their struggles are beautifully captured as each of her lead characters faces up to their respective demons. It can feel grim at times, but such is the power of her writing - her flawlessly constructed sentences, her acute ability to observe just the right details - that I found myself completely absorbed by this book for hours at a time. And on top of this she proves up to the task of weaving these elements into a powerful series of narratives. The only section I found wanting is that featuring the Hawaiian royal descendent, which I confess I had to force myself to battle through – to me this fairly short section just felt disconnected from the rest.

Yanagihara interestingly stands history on its head: we start with a progressive view of sexuality and partnerships and end with a repressive stance on the same. I was also struck by the way that each of her lead characters feels that they don’t quite fit in, that they don’t belong in this place they inhabit. Inadequacy, lack of confidence and loneliness is a package that is much repeated. There is much here to reflect on, snippets that stopped me and made me think. I observed this in her last book too, where I absorbed messages about how we can all wring a little more value out of our interactions with others and by soaking up and reflecting on what we see and experience. Her writing prompts me to reflect on my own life and of those close to me.

Though I failed to connect the dots sufficiently to spot any identifiable flow through the whole book, in the main I did enjoy each element as a stand-alone piece. But what conclusions did I draw, particularly given the book’s title? I’ll need to reflect on this further but as a first stab a couple of things stand out for me:

1. As a comment on America – if the author desires it to be such – it seems to suggest a view that the country is in danger of failing to create the utopia the country’s founders set out to achieve, and that a that a mixture of political and social irresponsibility is to blame.

2. For each of us Paradise inevitably looks quite different - we all have our own needs, wants and ambitions – so it follows that our paths will look very different too. But can we each (can any of us) summon the confidence and the desire, and also have the luck, to give us a decent opportunity to reach that place?

This book is a puzzle, one I don’t claim to have in any way resolved. But I think most readers will feel the same after working their way through its many pages. I believe this is a great piece of writing, but maybe it’s a little too long and a just little too perplexing. I look forward to reading the thoughts and theories put forward by others – maybe it’ll help me reach a higher level of understanding, but then again perhaps this is one of those books it’s just going to be impossible to pin down.

Comparisons to A Little Life are naturally going to be everywhere with this book, but this is a very different book- one that feels both global and insular, both expansive and constricting.

This book is smart, composed and utterly gripping. Following three different time periods, all one hundred years apart (roughly 1880, 1980 and 2080) we get a real panorama of history, both real and imagined. with characters facing down their own issues of illness, national emergency and tradition. Pandemic after pandemic rages, and we see the realities of what happens when the most vulnerable are left without support.

We see loops and repetitions, all with slight differences- time stops feeling linear in this book, as does the idea of 'progress' -characters' names return again and again until everyone feels like they are playing historical roles, but that never felt tired or cliched to me, or like characters were merely ciphers- every character felt incredibly well fleshed out and present.

This book feels like Yanagihara has looked down the barrel of the gun of the world we currently live in, and has decided to keep writing even when it's uncomfortable. Indeed the discomfort was one of my favourite parts of this book- Yanagihara allows us to squirm in the discomfort of imagined worlds that may never be ours, and also exposes us to worlds that are too real for comfort. At one point, 2020 is included in a list of pandemic years, and there is something so unbelievably startling about seeing your current time in a book as characters in the future look back on it, knowingly.

The book does not feel its length- the first two 'books' are about a quarter of the novel each, with the final book taking up the remaining half, and it builds towards such a breathless crescendo that it almost feels like a thriller. I almost wept towards the end of this book, I was that invested in the characters and the story. A very early contender for the best books of 2022, I think.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley and Pan Macmillian in exchange for an honest review.

What an ambitious novel this is - told in three sections that take place in three different timelines (in the early 1900s, the 1990s, and then between the 2050s and the 2090's) and quite likely in three different universes, with recurring character names and themes - and one that only Hanya Yanagihara could pull off. It is incredibly well written, the prose is completely absorbing and the way the author explores themes of loneliness, unrequited love, sexuality, family, wealth and poverty both emotional and in terms of status and culture, power, racial identity and illness is just as masterful as always. I struggled a bit with the central part of the book but the skill with which the author builds the worlds in her novels is unparalleled.

Hanya Yanagihara's first two novels, 'The People in the Trees' and 'A Little Life', are two of the best novels I have read from the last decade, so there was no way I wasn't going to read 'To Paradise' too. Her third novel has a lot in common with its two predecessors - it is striking in its originality, beautifully written yet still very readable, and willing to confront humanity at its very darkest. I don't think I found this novel quite as compelling overall, but it still has a huge amount to recommend it.

'To Paradise' is divided into three sections, set in 1893, 1993 and 2093. The first, entitled 'Washington Square' owes a lot to Henry James's novel of the same name, but is set in an alternate version of American history where same-sex marriage has been legalised within certain 'Free States' but other injustices related to race and class persist. As the wealthy protagonist David Bingham is introduced to one prospective husband, he begins a liaison with a young music teacher who may or may not have ulterior motives in pursuing David. The second section explores the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the gay community of New York in he 1990s, before looking back to the protagonist's childhood experiences growing up with his troubled father of royal descent in Hawaii. The final section imagines a dystopian future and switches between a story about a married couple set in 2093 and a series of letters written over the preceding five decades.

I found this last section, which is also the longest and comprises nearly half the novel, the most powerful although it is fairly uncompromising in its bleakness. We see a world ravaged by climate change, multiple pandemics of increasing severity and an increasingly authoritarian political climate. As in 'The People in the Trees', Yanagihara's world building is comprehensive and scarily convincing, and there are some genuinely harrowing scenes. This is tempered by the tenderness with which certain relationships are described, particularly between a grandfather and grandchild, but this is never sentimentalised.

I would have happily read the third section as a standalone novel, but the previous two sections add interest and complexity to the novel as a whole. The three stories are linked in a number of intriguing ways - names and places recur even though it is unclear whether these three time periods belong to the same universe; so too do certain relationships such as protective grandfathers and neglectful fathers. More generally, however, all three stories explore the nature of freedom and love and invite us to consider what paradise might look like for each of its protagonists.

Overall, this is a fascinating, multi-layered novel which I found increasingly absorbing as I moved through it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I have slightly mixed feelings about To Paradise, the new novel from Hanya Yanagihara. Along with most other people who read it, I loved her previous novel A Little Life. Her new one is beautifully written and immersive. It's split into 3 sections, one set in 1893, the next in 1993 and the last in 2093. I found the first and last section absolutely astounding, addictive and unputdownable. For me though, the middle section dragged and I honestly struggled to get through it. I'm ultimately very glad I kept going as the last section is incredible, but it took me a long time to get there.
That could just be me personally, and I would still recommend this novel, I just wish the middle section was different.

This book manages to live up to six years of hype. It is a very big book – not just in length but in ambition. It tells three stories, spanning two hundred years, set in an alternative, excitingly queer world. The three stories are distinctly separate, but they have linking themes and concepts bringing them together.

This is probably Yanagihara’s best work, displaying an exceptional skill in subtle but captivating world-building. I found the middle story only slightly lagging, but the other two are absolute knock-outs. In particular, the final story, which is about half the book’s overall length, is an exceptional, dystopian page turner set in a pandemic-ravaged future that feels troubling possible. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.