"To Paradise" by Hanya Yanagihara - review

 “To Paradise“ by Hanya Yanagihara:

This is an impressive, unusual read, an emotional brilliant novel that spans three centuries and paints three versions of an America quite different as we know it. It is a big picture, a novel with a grand scope and an abundance of all-human themes: love, the definition of family, gender, identity, race, shame, need, loneliness and loss and, always, the faint hope and promise of an utopia, a paradise we all long for.

The book is set into three sections between which there are unclear but existing connections. In its three sections which straddle three centuries the novel centers around Washington Square in New York City and plays out three very different stories. Sometimes it feels that there are three books in one, each told in a different voice and mood. Most impressively in the end, though, after having read all and formed an all-over image, I felt it as just one book, one novel that explores recurring themes in variations of perception and possibilities. The recurring themes deepen in substance and gain richness and meaningfulness by each section. 

At times, especially after the end of a section, a feeling of frustration set in, because by then I had established a feeling of caring sympathy and understanding, a connection with the protagonists. To be deprived of the knowledge and left in uncertainty of their fate was frustrating. But as I moved on through the book all works out in the end and I was left baffled but grateful for such a great reading journey. This is quite an emotional book but never does it come close to kitsch and it felt great reading it, its situations, its people, its emotions all clear and honest.

The first section paints a version of an 1883 America, New York. In accordance to the era this section of the book feels in part almost like a novel by Henry James. New York is part of the Free States where people may marry whomever they love. Restriction comes not in form of morality but in form of social status and discrimination. Here we meet David, the young sensitive heir of a very distinguished family who does not do what is expected of him and resists an arranged marriage to a much older man, searching liberty elsewhere with his love, even at the cost of loosing his family and the risk of failing. 

In the second section we meet David, a young Hawai’ian man who lives together with his older, wealthy partner in a rich, beautiful house on Washington Square in a New York of 1993. The AIDS crisis is at its peak, each and everyone is affected and for the first time an awareness, a foreboding of catastrophe induced by a virus hits the people. There is love, wealth, squalor, indulgence and depravity, but there is also much suffering, helplessness and loss. Through David, the young Hawai’ian, we learn of his troubled childhood in Hawai’i, we learn about the fate of his father and family, we learn about some of the history of Hawai’i and of some of its people in search of the old and presumably, better Hawai’i, another paradise lost and not found again.

To me the third section proved to be the most intense. It plays in an America of 2093 and while at first it felt like so many other dystopian tales it soon evolved into a touching, frightening, enlightening picture of what our society could become and how easily democracy as we know it can mutate into something inhuman and totalitarian. Here in 2093 we meet Charlie, a survivor of one of many deadly pandemics that flooded the planet since. Because of the side effects of the medication she received and which saved her life, she nevertheless lost much of her lively personality and lives, at first together with her grandfather, a formerly rich, famous, influential person, then later in an arranged marriage with her husband, in an apartment in an old grand house on Washington Square. Through her we slowly get to know and feel what this America has become and that her grandfather used to be one of the architects that transformed society in response to the overwhelming threat of the virus. We not only learn of her story but of the story of her grandfather as well, of his life with his husband and their son and how he, like everyone else, strived only for happiness and security for his family.

What makes this section so special is that in regard to the pandemic of the last two years it is so easy to imagine how society could change from ok to worse to bad to totalitarian. It shows how easily a society which considered itself open-minded and liberal, looses its thin civilian varnish and under pressure and deadly threat looks for scapegoats to blame and deprives minorities of their long fought-for rights and recognition, thus returning to a condemning, prejudiced morale of 200 years ago.

Each section yields numerous pleasures and many gripping moments and I truly enjoyed reading this book. The author does not offer a firm conclusion nor a definitive answer to many questions but in this she is in accordance to our times which can’t be easily sketched with a few definitive strokes. Above all Hanya Yanagihara, though, in this work of emotional genius, shows again a masterly understanding of what it is to be human, to live and love and what it is that binds us to each other.

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