I really don’t know where to start in reviewing this book.
A Little Life is one of the best books I’ve ever read and I was so looking forward to reading this.
I’m not sure if it’s very clever or very confusing. The book is split into three separate books, each telling a different story. However, the author uses the same names for the characters in all three books, which just confused me!
Although set 100 years apart, the same themes run through each of the books.
Unfortunately, they each end with lots of unanswered questions, which I found frustrating.
I tried so hard to like this book, but it just wasn’t for me.
It’s like marmite - you’ll either love it or hate it!
With thanks to the Netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

To Paradise is an epic novel that explores ideas of health and illness, race, nationhood, and family across three different times and many different characters. Starting in an alternative universe version of America in 1983, the first section explores the structures that exist in the Free States, a part of America that seems to have more liberal views and allows same-sex marriage, but that doesn't stop a wealthy young man from having to fight for who he wants to marry. The next section moves to 1993, in which a Hawaiian man hides the troubles of his upbringing from his lover against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis. And then the third section takes us to 2093 and a world full of pandemics, in which a scientist's granddaughter tries to understand where her husband is disappearing to in a strictly controlled world.

A lot of people (myself included) will be anticipating this after A Little Life, and To Paradise is very different in some ways, but also similar in others, particularly in some of Yanagihara's themes and locations and the general ambiguity and complexity around some of the moral issues. The book is in three distinct sections, and I like the fact that these are separate, making it clear where you're at and also making them resonate with each other but not completely link. The third section is a lot longer than the other two (it takes up half of the book) and probably the one that stood out most to me when reading, combining the narratives of a woman and her grandfather, with the latter told entirely in one-way letters.

The first section has a distinct vibe, a kind of high society romance and love across class barriers, but it raises a lot of issues and questions around power, class, and race, and the failings of a seemingly utopian place that is still prejudiced, racist, and rigidly structured. Stepping back from the immediate narrative to notice this makes it richer, and I enjoyed the hints of hindsight in the narrative voice combined with the somewhat ambiguous ending (which is teased about in the third part). I wasn't really sure what to make of this section whilst reading, and I think it benefits from considering as part of the whole book and in relation to the other sections.

The second section is quite different again, split into two parts exploring a Hawaiian man's life in New York City with his older lover, as he hides his complicated past and watches people get ill and die, and then his father's story, looking at identity and the colonisation of Hawaii through the eyes of a man with a mysterious illness. The first part was more of a snapshot, feeling quite brief, but the second part brings a rich narrative whilst also eventually unfolding the childhood of the protagonist from the first part.

As I already mentioned, the third section stood out most to me, almost immediately drawing me into the story of someone living in a future-America where many pandemics have ravaged the world and things seem to have taken a dystopian turn. The chapters in this section move between the 2093 narrative and an earlier one featuring the grandfather character as he tries to balance his high-flying scientific career with his husband and son, who are unsettled by moving to America from Hawaii and by what the scientist is up to. The story is told very well, and there's a lot of interesting moral complexity throughout, raising questions about what should be done to control viruses, but never at the expense of focusing on the human elements. The general dystopian setting isn't overdone, as some can be, and there's an interesting moment of reflection in one of the letters about what a dystopia even is.

Some people might feel that this is three books in one, but personally, I felt that they gained a lot by being together as one. In particular, the first and the third sections benefitted from each other by twisting around ideas of utopia and dystopia, marriage and freedom, and what it means to be known as a part of a family (the latter is also very important in the second section). I think if the book was just the third part, I would enjoy it less than I did, because it would feel too clearly like a COVID-19 take on dystopian fiction, rather than the larger exploration of a lot of themes that To Paradise is.

Though the third section of the book can hit close to home at times, To Paradise isn't trying to destroy the reader as A Little Life is, but instead paints a complex vision of people looking towards paradise, towards something better, and realising that they cannot help or protect others. It explores divisions in societies and violence towards groups of people, but also divisions and tensions within different kinds of family units. The length and format will probably put some people off, especially if the start of the first section leaves you wondering where the book is going, but actually the epic nature of the book worked well for me, weaving in a lot of questions and things to consider. It's not perfect, but it is quite an experience.

well, well, well. Here we are again!
To Paradise is told in three parts and it takes place in three different periods. If you're expecting A little life, do not. none of Hanya's books are alike but this one as the one before will make people talk about it, most will love, some will hate. You cannot ignore she's a great story-teller.

This is an epic read. Admirable and very interesting in parts one and three but the middle didn't take it anywhere in my opinion. I do feel this would be better if it had been shortened and edited. The author can write, that's for sure, but if let loose like this, I do feel it's to their detriment.

On the whole I did enjoy it and I really appreciate the epic picture it provides. Quite a read!

Destined to be one of the most talked about books of 2022.

From personal experience - being in strict quarantine/isolation with COVID is ideal for finding time to read this lengthy and multifaceted novel start to finish over a couple of days (which I think is the ideal way to appreciate the way in which the disparate facets draw together). But reading this book and particularly its dystopian and rather horrific view of future, deadly pandemics while you have COVID is a long way from ideal.

The novel is told in three Books – of which the second and third Books are both split into two narratives – although while those narratives in the third book are interleaved and have a very clear cohesion, the second Book itself reads like two distinct halves.

Book 1; Washington Square is in many respects a very competently and controlled but also very conventional Whartonesque fin de siècle story of a member of a privileged elite New York family, living in a large house in the titular square and having to choose between two futures via two potential partners – one an older respectable and rich candidate picked by his Grandfather Nathaniel in an arranged marriage, the other a far more “unsuitable” and penniless candidate his own age – to whom he is attracted but whose very fundamental unreliability is at the heart of their attraction.

The main character is David Bingham – one of three (long ago orphaned) children living with their Grandfather, while his siblings Eden (married to her wife Eliza) and John (with his husband Peter) are settled with children, he is single, still living with his grandfather and his grandfather’s servant Matthew). His grandfather urges him to marry a widower Charles Griffiths (whose suitability rests more on family wealth than family name – David himself a lonely individual and not an ideal catch due to a series of depressive episodes he suffers) . Charles has his own manservant – Adams. David teaches art at a school endowed by the Bingham foundation and their encounters a salaried music teacher Edward Bishop and the two begin an affair. If he does he will forfeit his inheritance of the Washington Square House – something bequeathed to him at the start of the book – if not he may lose his future happiness and self-regard. The book itself is rather open ended – never revealing the consequences of his final choice.

The setting is 1893 – but an alternative 1893. The observant reader of the review will have realised that all the relationships are same sex – and the book is not set in the United States – but the Free States, a smaller sub-set of States that 9from what we can tell – the book largely artificial expository sections or conversations) are formed around liberal ideals of sexual choice, education for both sexes, freedom of religious practice and which remain closely aligned to the wider United States (with the illiberal West and the defeated but still racist Southern Colonies separate entities still) but with their own freedom and wealth – based around a series of founder families who maintain their bonds via largely same-sex arranged marriages.

I must admit I found the society rather troubling – and here I think we already see the ambiguity that for me seems intrinsic to any reading of Yanagihara’s work.

For while the society may indeed seem a liberal Paradise at least in terms of sexual rights (which for many liberals today is The touchstone) – it is based (in increasing order of appalling-ness) on: severe inequality entrenched via marriage; racial exclusion – racism is frowned upon in the Free States and the States act as an escape point for blacks from the Colonies, but racial diversity is very frowned on and the blacks are quickly helped to other States where they will be more suitable; genocide – as Native Americans were simply massacred.

But then of course so is America in all its “Manifest Destiny” – and this I think is exactly what the author explores and asks us to consider. How do we feel about the Destiny. How Manifest really was it. What is America and what could it have been and what could it become.

The author has said: “It was the sense of possibility, of how easily America could have been something else, how easily it could become something else, that I wanted to explore in all three of these books. Because there have been certain moments in America’s creation, certain turning points where the country could have gone another way. So, in that sense [the novel is] not quite speculative and it’s not quite fantasy, but I’m interested in general in these sorts of hinge moments, in either personal history or national history, in which a choice is made that sets you barrelling down one course and a different choice could have meant something profoundly different. All three of the parts of this book are marked, I think, or identified by very personal stories against the background of much larger questions about national identity and what a nation must do, what it can do, what it should do and the very real consequences it has for these small individual lives within them.”

Now so far I have described the first book, to summarise (in what effectively becomes a game of Hanya-bingo):

Fin de siècle temporal setting. New York geographical setting. A large house on Washington Square. The family names – Griffiths and Bingham and Bishop (all incidentally names of early missionaries to Hawaii – so that implicitly Hawaiian colonisation is part of the story) – and the relationships forming between them. Main characters called – Charles/Charlie, David, Edward, Peter. Others called – Nathaniel, Eden, Eliza, Matthew. A manservant Adams. Privileged elites in society. An America divided not just along class and race lines but actually divided into different state groupings. Societal attitudes to male homosexual relationships. Grandparent choices on behalf of a grandchild. An unresolved ending.

The next two books begin at exact 100 year intervals, seemingly starting largely from scratch and not even in the same “alternate” timeline. While ostensibly very different – every element of my bingo card (and I am sure many more besides) recurs in each.

The author has said; “They are not meant to be the same people across centuries, nor living in the same America …………….. It was this idea of just taking the country
and turning it a half tweak on the dial each time. The people always had different selves, but the names themselves remain; just like the name of America remains for each generation, but America itself is something quite different.”

Book 2: Lipo-Wao-Nahele is as I implied above a book of two distinct halves. The first part (and I have to say for me by far the weakest of the whole novel) is a rather conventional and well told but rather tedious AIDS era tale (AIDS is not mentioned by name but it is hard to see this as much of an alternate timeline) set among the homosexual elite of New York. David (“Kawika” – the Hawaiian equivalent) Bingham is a young Hawaiian-origin paralegal whose lover is a senior partner Charles Griffiths. Much of the action takes place at a party held before the assisted death of Charles’s lifelong friend (and ex-lover Peter). David has an unopened letter which he knows says that his long estranged father is dying and he will need to visit.

The second part is perhaps the oddest and introduces the one part of my my bingo card only implicit in the first book – the colonisation of Hawaii. It is effectively an internal monologue addressed to David by his father – also Wika, who is living largely physically and mentally incapacitated (it seems through choice – a choice he has decided to reverse by surprising his son when he comes to pay last respect) in a care home. In it he tells his life story – something which his son never really understood. Wika is effectively the deposed Crown Prince of Hawaii (the descendant of the last Queen who abdicated when America annexed the Island) but for all his grandmother’s pride he was unwilling to take on the role expected of him and drifted in life until taken in hand by a friend - Edward Bishop – who, inspired by Black Power movements in the US in the 1960s espouses a radical form of Hawaiian independence, the two eventually forming an ill-founded commune on some deserted ancient forest land which is part of Wika’s family inheritance. The encounter between son and father does not happen – so the story is both not resolved or tied up between the two sections.

Interestingly though one the black activists that radicalises Edward does raise exactly the fault lines which I felt were missing from the way in which the Free States are portrayed

“And in the same way, nothing has really changed here. America is a country with sin at its heart. You know what I’m talking about. One group of people sent away from their land; another group of people stolen from their land. We replaced you, and yet we never wanted to replace you— we wanted to be left where we were. None of our ancestors, our great-great-great-grandparents, ever woke up one day and thought: Let’s sail halfway around the world, be part of a land grab, pit ourselves against some other native peoples. No way, no how. That is not how normal people, decent people, think— that is how the devil thinks. But that sin, that mark, never goes away, and although we didn’t cause it, we are all infected by it.

Book 3: Zone Eight was by far the strongest of the novel, it is the part that will make the novel so zeitgeisty but also the part that will I think be hardest for people to read.

There are two sections – the first is set in a extremely dystopian 2093 – New York is part of a totalitarian State (an unspecified part of America) where pretty well every freedom has been sacrificed to counter the existential threat of periodic and devastatingly deadly pandemics. The main character is Charlie Bingham-Griffith – a quiet and rather unemotive lab-technician in the research labs which effectively (under Chinese supervision) dominate not just the economy but the society, she is in a marriage of convenience with a homosexual – Edward Bishop – an aquatic gardener in the same facilities. Their marriage in a society which is focused on child raring to deal with a population denuded of its children by the regular pandemics is permitted as both are sterile - Charlie due to the side-effects of life-saving anti-virals, David by choice as he was deemed a subversive and took sterility as an alternate to recorrection camps. As time goes on, and with the increasing threat of a new even more terrible pandemic, Charlie befriends the rather mysterious David – who she meets in the square where she lives (one of the few permitted activities being listening to storytellers – in a rather clever aside she remembers a previous storyteller telling the story of Book One ending (to groans of disappointment) “And next week, I’ll tell you what happened to the man,”.)

The second strand is an interwoven series of letters written over some 45 years (2043-2088) by Charlie’s grandfather Charles to an English acquaintance (and likely ex-lover) Peter. Charles is involved in the American research to pandemics and Peter in the English response – both rising into government/state circles over time beyond just academia. Early on we read

So I gave him my short speech about infectious diseases and how I spent my days trying to anticipate the newest ones, playing up the statistics that civilians love hearing, because civilians love to panic: How the 1918 flu killed fifty million people, which led to additional, but less disastrous, pandemics in 1957, 1968, 2009, and 2020. How, since the 1970s, we’ve been living in an era of multiple pandemics, with a new one announcing itself at the rate of every five years. How viruses are never truly eliminated, only controlled. How decades of excessive and reckless prescribing of antibiotics had given rise to a new Family of microbes, one more powerful and durable than any in human history. How habitat destruction and the growth of megacities has led to our living in closer proximity to animals than ever before, and therefore to a flourishing of zoonotic diseases. How we’re absolutely due for another catastrophic pandemic, one that this time will have the potential to eliminate up to a quarter of the global population, putting it on par with the Black Death of more than seven hundred years ago, and how everything in the past century, from the outbreak of 2030 through last year’s episode in Botswana, has been a series of tests that we’ve ultimately failed, because true victory would be treating not just each outbreak individually but developing a comprehensive global plan, and because of that, we’re inevitably doomed.

(As an aside there seems to be a very major error in this paragraph with the completely out of place reference to antibiotic resistance – fascinating for bacterial disease, for viruses – not so much)
Charles marries Nathaniel and they have a son David – both from Hawaii but tears their family away to the US for his career – something Nathaniel always resents. Hawaii itself regains independence but is then devasted by pandemic. As time progresses the state takes greater measures to contain pandemics including a series of controversial quarantine camps – which in some cases are little more than places for people to die – and Charles is increasingly involved with the policies – to the disgust of the increasingly radicalised and rather conspiracy theorist turned activist David (who in the meantime has a daughter Charlie by an activist Eden. Later though – Charles himself starts to realise that the once absurd accusations are becoming true as liberty is sacrificed to fear and we begin to see how the dystopia of Charlie’s world emerged.

Over the years, I’ve been astonished at and dismayed by and fearful of how acquiescent the public has proven to be: Fear of disease, the human instinct to stay healthy, has eclipsed almost every other desire and value they once treasured, as well as many of the freedoms they had thought inalienable. That fear was yeast to the state, and now the state generates its own fear when they feel the population’s is flagging.

This last section builds, in both sections to something of a climax, one of these around the legality of gay marriage, the other around the fate of Charlie and David – with the now inevitable lack of resolution.

Now this last part of the novel left me troubled. It feels like Charles’s prediction has some grounding in current America – but seems to have the politics almost exactly the wrong way around. In Hanya’s telling via Charles – the fear of viral pandemic and the resulting shredding of liberties is exploited by a totalitarian right wing state (the clear signifier in this book of a right wing attitude is the opposition to same sex – particularly male – relationships and marriage and this is the very thing Charles fears will happen when he writes these words). And is left leaning radicals like David who oppose this and propose conspiracy theories – some founded, most not.

But of course in the real world (particularly the real America) it is the liberal left who feel liberties should be constrained (mask wearing compulsory, businesses shut down, schools and economy put on hold, quarantines and policing of gatherings, vaccine passports or even compulsory vaccines) and those on the right (who are almost always opposed to gay marriage and other liberal ideas) who strongly oppose this and who form the conspiracy theories.

With the net result that large parts of this last part feel like they could actually have been written by (or at least will strengthen the views) of anti-vaxxers and anti-lockdown protesters.

Overall though a fascinating novel – one sure I feel to provoke debate, like and dislike, just like “A Little Life” albeit for entirely different reasons.

I got quite far into this book before realising it just wasn't interesting me.
I'm definitely putting it down to wrong book at wrong time,as having read a little life,we know Yanagihara can write.
I felt the first part a bit confusing to begin with,and by the time I'd got my head around it,just too slow.
From there I could never fully get into it.

Well I knew when I started this book it was most likely to break my heart and yes it did but in a much different way than I was expecting, I had read A Little Life by this author and ended up in pieces but this book of course was different and although very sad it also was uplifting. Told in three parts it was difficult at at first to see just where the book was going but as it progressed the stories started to fit together and it was an amazing read.
The three stories are of different times that build upon each other and coming together in the the last part which I have to say was my favourite I loved the characters of grandfather and Charlie (little cat) and although the time she lives in is a terrifying portrait of a world besieged by pandemic’s, hardship and totalitarian rules it still had hope and love.
This is a big book it’s also not an easy or comfortable read but I loved it, it was different to what I was expecting and very frightening at times to realise just what the future holds especially in the times we are living in now. The writing and characters are superb as you would expect from Hanya Yanagihara it’s a read that made me think and it’s a read that made me cry but it’s also a read that I won’t forget.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan, Picador for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I fell in love with Yanagihara's lyrical writing style in A Little Life and hoped to find the same dreamlike quality to sweep me up in her next release, To Paradise. And I did...sort of. My anticipation for To Paradise might have done the book a disservice as it was hard not to compare my reading experience for how utterly engrossed I was while reading A Little Life. I enjoyed To Paradise overall; parts I loved and parts I was disappointed by, which is why my overall star rating is a 3/5.

The first part was the strongest and I loved how the grand house became part of the story, how Charles and David's relationship unfolded, tentatively at first, and then with reckless abandon. I enjoyed the dynamic of Charles' family and searched eagerly for snatches of life in the wider Free States, realising with increasing horror that paradise here meant only paradise for some, not all.

Moving onto part two, and I'm afraid this is where my attention began to wane. The date of the story immediately made it clear the AIDs crisis was going to play a large role but I was surprised to find it almost glossed over, although perhaps that was intentional, reflecting how society treated the crisis - although as this part was presented with the protagonist writing from inside the community, it felt strange for there to be so much distance. I did enjoy the long epistolary element at the end of part two, where David's father told their story, but it felt abrupt how the first and second half of this part linked together.

The third part, which actually took up close to 50% of the book, felt like it could have been a standalone novel and I think it would have been all the stronger for it. It was fascinating to discover this dystopian version of the US and the awful politics around equal marriage/reproduction and this felt like the most complete story of the three. I was somewhat fatigued by the character names jumping around from story to story and it was hard to track who might be related to who from the previous stories, but when I classed this as a standalone in my head I found myself utterly drawn into Charlie's story and relationship with both her grandfather and husband. Charles' letters to Peter were so compelling and I was truly gripped by the final pages, I only wish it hadn't taken until the last few chapters to fall in love with this story.

Yanagihara is undoubtedly an absolute master at what she does, and I am hesitant to only give To Paradise 3/5 because I know so many readers are going to be enamoured. I will be picking up a finished copy to see if any final changes were made after the proof was released and I still consider myself a loyal Yanagihara fan, despite my average rating for this proof.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing this copy!

Oh my gosh this book, it was so beautifully written and so emotive, every second was a privilege to read. I loved the story, the characters, the setting, the prose just everything. This book will stay with me forever.

Ive been waiting 6 years for this book! Yes, the words “highly anticipated “ were never more accurate. I am one of those that read “A Little Life” ahead of its publication in 2015 and have not stopped talking about it since.
But now is the time to stop. Because “To Paradise” is not A little Life, and nor did any of really want it to be.

To Paradise is, in many ways, 3 novels in one. Set in the late 1800s, the 1980s and the late 21st century we are taken on an ambitious plot and structure that sets this novel apart. Yes there are some common themes in the 3 parts, but these are slowly uncovered, and I suspect if I reread I would find more.

Overwhelming themes of love, loss, family, poverty, wealth are within the pages of all 3 parts. There are common names used in all of the stories, and locations and events. I found myself craving the familiar as I moved to part 2 and part 3, but Yanagihara forces us to let go, only to tease another potential link.

It’s not a quick read. At over 600 pages, even with long stretches of reading it has taken me some time to finish. I needed time throughout to absorb, to try and find answers to my questions. Some of them are still unanswered. And that’s fine, because this is a book that does not tie up all the loose ends,

It is a novel that I want my friends to read. And I will want to discuss it with them endlessly.

Maybe it has a lot in common with A little Life after all….