Books
My Thoughts on To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Three novels in one with an old house, a pandemic, and a longing for Paradise intertwined between them
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I bought To Paradise (Bookshop.org affiliate link) on an almost impulse purchase. I’d seen Hanya Yanagihara’s appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers (link at bottom of post) and knew it was a book about a pandemic that she partly wrote during the pandemic and that was enough information for me. I didn’t know it was three stories in one 700-page book. I didn’t know it was sort of speculative, imagining a United States that isn’t the United States as we know it because the Civil War went differently.
Fin de siècle caught my eye immediately when I scanned the summary on the front flap, letting me know exactly what mood to expect. The three stories take place in 1893, 1993, and 2093, and each time period faces a pandemic or fever of sorts, with the 1893 plot centering around a longing for travel, adventure, and love, a desire to go West to seek independent fortune in a “Gold Rush fever” sort of way. 1993 deals with a New York City community decimated by AIDS, and by 2093, several flu-like pandemics have circled the globe. Throughout all three stories, an old house in Washington Square becomes a focal point, an anchor for our characters as they seek Paradise against all odds.
But these aren’t just stories about an old house and pandemics. In 1893, New York is a world where same-sex couples are just as common as heterosexual couples because New York is one of the few states where same-sex marriage isn’t just legal, but encouraged, because of so many orphans in need of families after the war. The stories of 1993 and 2093 delve into the politics of Hawaii (sometimes Hawai’i in the book, depending on the context) and whether its statehood was the right choice for Hawaiians, while the stories remained tethered to the old house in Washington Square. Sometimes we don’t know the race, gender, or sexual orientation of a character right away because we don’t need to know until it’s important for the story.
One passage struck me in particular, in light of events over the last few weeks. Just as news was coming out that Russians didn’t know their military was invading Ukraine and Russian soldiers were realizing what they were actually doing, I read this exchange between one character trying to convince another to leave a heavily authoritarian state:
“Don’t you want another kind of life for yourself, Charlie? Someplace where you can be free?”
“I’m free here,” I said, but he kept talking.
“Somewhere you can — I don’t know, read books or travel or go where you want?”…
“Every country is the same.”…
“No Charlie,” he said gently, “they’re not.”
Chilling.
I admit that while the romance of the first book swept me away, and the pandemic aspect of the third book kept me riveted, the second part of the second book dragged on for me. I know why it was there; it gives us a good foundation for some of the conflict in the third book. But it was long. And in general, this is not a fast-paced book. It is a book of love and pain and longing written with deliberate emotion and I’m still wrestling with the ending, unsure if they found their Paradise or not.
Hanya Yanagihara’s appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers:
Read more writing about reading and writing:
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