Though Hanya Yanagihara's “A Little Life” was a million-copy bestseller, it also sharply divided readers with some hailing it a life-changing triumph and others deriding it as manipulative misery porn. The author's new equally lengthy 700-page novel “To Paradise” is eliciting similarly mixed responses as Alex Preston has already declared it a “masterpiece for our times” in The Guardian while in Harper's Rebecca Panovka criticised the novel's aspiration to be an “epidemiological cautionary tale” and posits that “if the antidote to dangerous ideas is didactic storytelling, I have to wonder (apparently with Yanagihara) whether the cure is worse than the disease.” I'm sure some other readers will similarly overly hail or excessively disparage this new novel in an argumentative fashion. However, rather than making a strident declaration about my overall assessment of “To Paradise” my gut response and balanced opinion is that it's an impressive, thought-provoking epic (especially because it remains so wonderfully engaging for hundreds and hundreds of pages), but its structure also presents some uniquely frustrating difficulties.
The novel centres around one New York City square, but its three different sections straddle three different centuries with three very different stories. Not only do the circumstances and characters radically change between parts, but so does the style of each section as they move from a Jamesian psychological/social drama couched in an alternate history to a dystopian future where the draconian government takes severe measures to contain a multitude of deadly new plagues. Also the characters between sections share little or no connection to each other (though certain links eventually become clear) these different individuals all have the same names: David, Charles and Edward. At one point a character wryly comments: “that is a lot of Davids”. Though this all sounds extremely confusing as an outline one of the wonders of this novel is that it all becomes quite clear during the actual experience of reading the book.
I can't help but feel the recycling of names throughout different sections isn't really necessary and is more about a self-conscious statement the author is trying to make. In an interview in The Observer, Yanagihara commented “We're often renaming things in the United States, either to eradicate a bad memory or to try to dissociate it from a person who history has not treated kindly or who deserves to be treated with more respect. There's this idea that naming something changes the fundamental nature of it, but does naming who we are make us more real to others? Or is it simply a way of making ourselves more real to ourselves?” These are interesting questions to ask, but challenging the notion of how we use names by repeatedly using them in a single novel feels needlessly confusing and the effect the author was aiming for didn't really resonate with me.
However, it's to Yanagihara's credit that she skilfully evokes distinctly different worlds and uses such rich detail that I almost always understood what was happening and emotionally connected with the characters involved. Any confusion lay not so much in the characters' identities but in mentally trying to link the sections together. My advice is to not burn yourself out doing this. No doubt some scholar detective might tease out many connections between sections but I don't think it's necessary to do so to enjoy this book. Overall themes definitely emerge regarding privilege, the nature of love, the meaning of freedom, how we strive for utopian ideals, the state of America and questions surrounding national/racial/sexual identity. These are ideas to reflect upon in retrospect as the immediate drama of each section yields numerous pleasures and many gripping moments. It took a little time for me to orientate myself within each new section (and the second and third sections are broken down further into two more distinct parts) but I always became thoroughly engrossed.
Yanagihara does have a habit of pulling the rug out from under her readers. It often felt like every time Jude achieved some happiness in “A Little Life” it was soon squashed. Similarly, every time I became heavily engaged with each part of “To Paradise” the section would end with a nail biting cliffhanger and the story moved on. I'm not a reader who requires a tidy ending but when I'm prevented from knowing the fate of so many characters I've come to dearly care about it's frustrating wondering what's become of them. Small hints are built into some sections when characters reflect upon their pasts, but I think readers should prepare themselves that this novel won't offer a firm conclusion. Nevertheless, the many stories this book contains are meaty enough that I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.
Clearly, I have very mixed feelings about this novel. From the outside I'm not sure if it all hangs together, but when I was actually reading it I was thoroughly engrossed. That's an impressive achievement for such a shapeshifting book. It's wonderful how Yanagihara reimagines a 19th century history for America where homosexuals were free to marry, but also become entangled in all the class conflicts that accompany the state of marriage. Some of the other things I loved most about the novel were David's obsessive and passionate nature in the first section, the complex arguments surrounding Hawaiians who petition for a return to an indigenous monarchy in the second section and in the third section the unintentionally funny detail that Great Britain is renamed New Britain as it becomes a paradise that outsiders yearn to move to. There's a lot more I enjoyed about this book and I'll certainly continue to mull over it in the weeks to come. I'm also sure it will inspire even more passionate discussion amongst readers and I can't help but feel that's always a good thing.
