To Paradise
A Novel
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3.9 • 181 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
#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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This ambitious epic by the author of A Little Life cleverly plays with ideas of utopia and dystopia. The novel follows three different storylines in three different time periods: an alternate version of 1893 New York, where a wealthy heir must fight for the man he wants to marry; 1993, as a Hawaiian man struggles with his background amidst the AIDS crisis; and 2093, where a woman fights to solve her husband’s disappearance despite a totalitarian regime and a global pandemic. Yanagihara sustains the novel’s bold three-part structure thanks to her clear, patient prose, connecting the disparate stories through recurring themes of relationships, race, and inheritance. Although the novel is brilliantly complex, its characters’ journeys are defined by relatable feelings like loneliness, uncertainty, and hope. One of the most absorbing and thought-provoking novels we’ve read in ages, To Paradise reflects our modern moment through a dazzling prism of other possibilities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yanagihara's ambitious if unwieldy latest (after National Book Award finalist A Little Life) spins a set of three stories in New York City's Washington Square over 200 years. David Bingham lives in the utopian "Free States" of 1893. He rejects a proposed arranged marriage with another wealthy, older man, opting to pursue a love match with a music teacher who lives a hardscrabble life. At a dinner party in 1993, the host's oldest friend is dying from AIDS as the other guests consider the meaning of one's legacy. One of them, also named David Bingham (this one a native Hawaiian paralegal), is cautiously optimistic about his relationship with his wealthy older boyfriend, Charles Griffith. A century later, a woman named Charlie Griffith deals with dystopian conditions such as a series of pandemics and a totalitarian society in which the press and homosexual relationships have been outlawed, and struggles to build a meaningful relationship with her husband. The stories are united by the characters' desire for love as their freedom is diminished. The prose in the first section effectively conjures the style of Henry James, but there's too much exposition and not enough character development in the final section, where the author spends too much time building out the future world. There's a great deal of passion, but on the whole it's a mixed bag.
Customer Reviews
A frustrating, intentionally inconclusive megatale.
Hanya Yanagihara’s period-jumping epic is high-minded and at times literally difficult to read, with many sentences running on seemingly interminably (especially liberal use of the em dash helps facilitate this).
Despite its deliberately unsatisfying conclusions and its occasionally plodding pace, Yanagihara’s world-building in the first and third books is sprawling and undeniably impressive.
Though not quite as uniquely emotionally destructive as “A Little Life,” “To Paradise” is anything but. It is a grim tale — particularly in its third, final, and longest section, which doubles as a warning (if somewhat clichéd) against giving up one’s liberties for the greater good.
If you’ve the time and commitment, give it a read. I recommend taking notes.
Love it and I don't know why
I'm not really sure what it all was about in the beginning but I loved it.
Bizarre
I really tried reading this one…