To Paradise

January 10, 2022
Yanagihara’s ambitious if unwieldy latest (after National Book Award finalist A Little Life) spins a set of three stories in New York City’s Washington Square over 200 years. David Bingham lives in the utopian “Free States” of 1893. He rejects a proposed arranged marriage with another wealthy, older man, opting to pursue a love match with a music teacher who lives a hardscrabble life. At a dinner party in 1993, the host’s oldest friend is dying from AIDS as the other guests consider the meaning of one’s legacy. One of them, also named David Bingham (this one a native Hawaiian paralegal), is cautiously optimistic about his relationship with his wealthy older boyfriend, Charles Griffith. A century later, a woman named Charlie Griffith deals with dystopian conditions such as a series of pandemics and a totalitarian society in which the press and homosexual relationships have been outlawed, and struggles to build a meaningful relationship with her husband. The stories are united by the characters’ desire for love as their freedom is diminished. The prose in the first section effectively conjures the style of Henry James, but there’s too much exposition and not enough character development in the final section, where the author spends too much time building out the future world. There’s a great deal of passion, but on the whole it’s a mixed bag. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.

Starred review from April 1, 2022

Yanagihara's (A Little Life) much-anticipated third novel explores love, regret, and the inextricable bonds of family, set against a richly imagined alternate historical backdrop. The novel is composed of three parts, with stories set in 1893, 1993, and 2093 and located in New York City and Hawai'i. In a homophobia-free 1893, David, heir to the magnificent Bingham estate, struggles to decide whether to pursue a love match with a handsome, but unreliable younger man or submit to a sensible arranged marriage. In an AIDS-ravaged 1993, a different David chooses love and security with a wealthy older gentleman. One hundred years later, a young woman, Charlie Griffith, navigates an ecologically devastated totalitarian state in which food, pleasure, and sexuality are strictly controlled. Each of the audiobook's five narrators delivers an outstanding performance that captures the nuances and tone of Yanagihara's bleak novel; Edoardo Ballerini, Kurt Kanazawa, and Feodor Chin's narrations are sensitively delivered and collectively bring out the characters' melancholy and yearning. And the final set of stories, narrated by Catherine Ho and BD Wong, is exquisite, channeling the hesitant but deeply emotional Charlie and her tender, mournful grandfather. VERDICT This is a transformative and superbly executed audiobook; highly recommended for all collections.--Sarah Hashimoto

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