To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Hardcover: The problem, though, with trying to be the ideal anything is that eventually the definition changes, and you realize that what you'd been pursuing all along was not a single truth but a set of expectations determined by context. You leave that context, and you leave behind those expectations, too, and then you're nothing once again. - p269.

Hanya Yanagihara, the author of the classic A Little Life, is back with another massive tome! 

To Paradise (2022) is 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.

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 are joined in an enthralling and 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 cannot 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.

To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous 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.

About the author: Born in Los Angeles, Hanya Yanagihara spent her childhood between Hawaii, New York, Maryland, California and Texas. After graduating from Smith College in Massachusetts, she settled in New York and worked in publishing before becoming a journalist and the editor for Condé Nast Traveler and subsequently the New York Times style supplement, T magazine.

Her debut novel The People in the Trees, published in 2013 to wide critical acclaim, draws from the true story of Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who was later convicted of child abuse. Yanagihara’s second novel rocketed her into the literary scene: an enduring bestseller and a modern classic, A Little Life (2015) won the 2015 Kirkus Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Her third novel, To Paradise (2022), spans three centuries and explores three alternate versions of America and the American experiment.

Rating: 5/5