From the author of the popular book “A Little Life”, Hanya Yanagihara is back with her next novel “To Paradise”. Broken up into three stories during three different alternative time periods of American history, we follow a family through the years of 1893, 1993 and 2093 who all have one thing in common besides their bloodline: a townhouse located in New York City. We follow three different stories from different generations of the Hawaiian family living in NYC, and how illness can impact them the same way even when they are living hundreds of years apart.
Now I have yet to read “A Little Life” so this is my first time reading any book by Yanagihara. A lot of people seemed to like “A Little Life” so I was excited when I saw her newest novel was nominated for the GoodReads Choice Awards for Fiction. I am on a journey of reading all of the GoodReads Choice Awards winners and this is the second one I have picked up. This is a large book, over 600 pages, and I listened to it on audiobook, which I think is the way to approach it as there are a variety of voice actors for the different characters we explore. Without the audiobook, I am not sure if I would have been able to make it through as easily as I did. But there is a lot to unpack with this book and I wish it would have been adapted in a different way that Yanagihara did.
The book is broken up into three major storylines, each taking place 100 years apart. The book is over 600 pages, but it is not evenly spread out amongst the different time periods. There were a lot of interesting aspects of each of the stories, but my major issue with it was that even though they all had similar themes and locations, there was not really a reason why all of them had to be told in one book as one story. It was way too long to be one novel; I wish it was broken up into a trilogy because it would have made the individual stories flow better and give them their time to be expanded upon. I was interested in what each time period had to say about the state of America and the illnesses that were running through each of the stories, but the first two took up the first half of the book and the third was the other half. If it was broken up into three novels as part of a series, the first two books would have had their chance to be better fleshed out and much more enjoyable than they were.
Each of the stories were written in a way that kept me entertained in its high moments and really dragged in its low points. It is hard to describe, but I wanted to keep reading because in certain moments I was so invested in the characters and what they were doing, but then it would take a complete 180 and I would be bored in an instant. I am not sure if this is Yanagihara’s writing style or if it was me, but as much as I wanted more from these stories, the times that dragged really dragged. I think this book would have been better as a series, even if I thought that some moments could have been cut out. Maybe this was because Yanagihara was limited to staying within one book. The best of the books that did not have me bored was the third story as it was the one that was the most fleshed out and was given the most opportunity to be a complete story. While the characters and story were there and entertaining, I was not fully engaged with all of the parts evenly.
An heart-wrenching and interconnected story that can keep you entertained from time to time, but the unevenness of the stories makes the book drag more than it should.
