Andrew Smith's Reviews > To Paradise

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 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.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan, Picador for supplying a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.