Genre Fiction
![Hanya Yanagihara - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00DXM8WEI.jpg)
To Paradise: A Novel
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the award-winning, best-selling author of the classic A Little Life-a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS
To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara's understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love-partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens-and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him-and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances.
These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • NPR • GOODREADS
To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara's understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love-partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens-and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him-and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances.
These three sections comprise an ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
Editorial Reviews
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • GLAMOUR • NPR • GOODREADS • O MAGAZINE
"Remarkable…The emotional impact of this novel is less visceral than A LITTLE LIFE but only because the author's scope is so vast and her dexterity so dazzling….TO PARADISE demonstrates the inexhaustible ingenuity of an author who keeps shattering expectations….she explores the dream of freedom that lures all these characters to risk everything for a paradise they desire but can barely envision. No matter the setting – past present or future – TO PARADISE stems from the hypnotic confluence of Yanagihara's skills. She speaks softly, with the urgency of a whisper. She draws us into the most intimate sympathy with these characters while placing them in crises that feel irresistibly compelling."
- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"We are given a patriarch, wealth, children; there is an arranged marriage, an inheritance, a true love, a class divide and a significant twist. Deftly paced and judiciously detailed, the tale makes hay with the conventions of the 19th-century novel. But that's not all. With breathtaking audacity Yanagihara rewrites America….Yanagihara masterfully repurposes themes, situations and motifs…This ambitious novel tackles major American questions and answers them in an original, engrossing way. It has a major feel. But it is finally in [its] minor moments that Yanagihara shows greatness."
- Gish Jen, The New York Times Book Review(cover review)
"The confounding, brilliant, intricate, beautiful, horrific To Paradise is-if this string of adjectives did not sufficiently convey it-an extraordinary book. Divided into three seemingly distinct sections, positioned a hundred years apart, the book is one-part historical fiction (set in 1893), part present-ish-day chronicle (1993), and part futuristic sci-fi story (2093). (...
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • ESQUIRE • GLAMOUR • NPR • GOODREADS • O MAGAZINE
"Remarkable…The emotional impact of this novel is less visceral than A LITTLE LIFE but only because the author's scope is so vast and her dexterity so dazzling….TO PARADISE demonstrates the inexhaustible ingenuity of an author who keeps shattering expectations….she explores the dream of freedom that lures all these characters to risk everything for a paradise they desire but can barely envision. No matter the setting – past present or future – TO PARADISE stems from the hypnotic confluence of Yanagihara's skills. She speaks softly, with the urgency of a whisper. She draws us into the most intimate sympathy with these characters while placing them in crises that feel irresistibly compelling."
- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"We are given a patriarch, wealth, children; there is an arranged marriage, an inheritance, a true love, a class divide and a significant twist. Deftly paced and judiciously detailed, the tale makes hay with the conventions of the 19th-century novel. But that's not all. With breathtaking audacity Yanagihara rewrites America….Yanagihara masterfully repurposes themes, situations and motifs…This ambitious novel tackles major American questions and answers them in an original, engrossing way. It has a major feel. But it is finally in [its] minor moments that Yanagihara shows greatness."
- Gish Jen, The New York Times Book Review(cover review)
"The confounding, brilliant, intricate, beautiful, horrific To Paradise is-if this string of adjectives did not sufficiently convey it-an extraordinary book. Divided into three seemingly distinct sections, positioned a hundred years apart, the book is one-part historical fiction (set in 1893), part present-ish-day chronicle (1993), and part futuristic sci-fi story (2093). (...
Readers Top Reviews
Mr. A. RichardsAl
This book is large and complex and bleak and brilliant. It is effectively three stories that are linked - we see members of two of the same families at the end of the 18th, 20th and 21st centuries. The first two parts are shorter and most of the second half of the book is the future segment. You could almost argue that the story is set in a parallel universe. In 1893 our main character is a gay man who is looking to have an arranged marriage - arranged by his grandfather, who is also a gay man, which is a socially acceptable thing in this America. Only it’s not really America - the states have coalesced into five distinct nations - the state of Maine is a country of it’s own, Texas and many of the southern states have formed The United Colonies, the three states on the west coast have formed The Western Union, and the rest (pretty much) has become America. New York is part of the final country, the Free States, which is everything south of Maine down to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The first story is about the main character trying to avoid his arranged marriage when he falls in love with another man, who, it turns out, has gad a history of getting together with rich men and stealing their money. We leap forward to 1993, where the descendants of the characters in the first book are living with the Aids epidemic. The final story is set in a bleak future where there are constant pandemics and global warming has happened to truly terrifying proportions, again following members of the same family. The author has made some interesting choices. There is no family tree shown, so you have to speculate how many generations have passed in the time between each story. The only thing that links them all is the surname Bingham, and a property in New York. Also, we never really find out what happens at the end of two of the segments. Does the David get ripped off at the end of the first book? (Even worse we are teased with finding out the resolution to this story in the third book but that never pans out either!) Who is in the boat on the final page of the penultimate chapter? It’s bleak but the final segment is page turning stuff. Even here, the narrative has two strands - one set in 2093 and 2094, and the other giving background to those characters from fifty years ago to seven years ago. The flashback segments sometimes warm you of what is about to happen, or the other way around. It’s amazingly constructed and also horrifically plausible. The third segment is easily the best, but they are all good. We are left on a cliffhanger and I suppose it is up to the reader to decide whether things work out well or not. I have my own theory, but having scoured the last few pages for clues as to which way it goes, I realise that the author has left it deliberately ambiguous. The end chunk is about a pandemic (or rather a ...
merrckdMr. A. Ric
Some might find the structure and/or the content of this novel challenging, but I find that it is so skillfully done that the result is an honest exploration of who we are as people, how our circumstances shape us, but do not have to define us, the risks of breaking free of the appearance of circumstantial safety, the striving towards something better, love & loss. There's three sections, but I count five distinct stories told from different POVs. The first section was difficult for me to get through because it seemed like the writer was not doing as much as she could with the alternate history she created. I found it hard to sympathize the protagonist. But, Yanagihara's prose is so strong, she is a highly skilled writer, that I kept pushing through it. Then the ending of the first section was brilliant and maybe the first spark of understanding I had of what she was doing. The next two sections I was fully engaged and quickly read through the rest of the novel. By the end, the brilliance of the framework and stories she constructed was impressive and resonated with me as a reader and human being. It's my first book I've read from Yanagihara and it makes me want more.
Robert Silvermanm
There is no need to repeat in other terms the observations by those who have recognized the extraordinary richness and creative complexity of this novel. Reading it is an emotionally difficult experience, and I required a break between sections in order to recover from just-read sections. Embedded, I also noted observations that transcend their location here. For example, on page 587 the comment on the “relevant” Charlie that “I cannot see her without experiencing her in triplicate.” “The shadow of who she once was,” her current reality, and “the projection of what she might become.” And with mourning for the first, bewilderment for the second, and “fear for the third.” Reading this, the book then becomes populated by my grandchildren, some who I frame similarly… and now within a new concept: in triplicate. And grandchildren who do not fit this form: they live in an upward trajectory. And so I spend time exploring my emotional life of loved ones. And the book’s third section…for me a reflection of the likely outcome of current trends with authoritarian governments, climate failures, the scarcity of food, and likely future pandemics. The observation by one character that “America is a country with sin at its heart…” (588) and now in my own words, as we murdered Native Americans and built our society on slave labor…Well, in addition to the failures noted in the previous sentence, this brings us to the consequences we now face as a society. Hanya Yanagihara speaks universally and in this novel, for the past and for our future, as well as the one in this book.
Bronwen JonesLesl
After loving A Little Life, I looked forward to reading To Paradise. But I gave up about 2/3 through Part 1. I skipped ahead into Part 2 to see if it improved, but more of the same. To me, none of the main characters that I met, or their families, or their love lives, were interesting enough to keep me reading. Even if they'd been women, it wouldn't have made a difference. This is one of the few books ever I have not completed after starting. Why, I ask myself. Well, I found it very wordy and slow, and the love affairs tedious. And yet, it is obviously a master feat of a novel. Just one of the rare ones not for me.
