Especially in the first two stories, gay marriage is mostly accepted, but there are places in which it's frowned upon or even punished. The most prominent of these elements, however, is LGBTQ+ relationships. Along with the topics mentioned above, these places and some of the names she uses time and again give To Paradise a hint of cohesion. She also revisits places like Washington Square and some Manhattan streets. Unrequited love, insecurity, relationship drama, secret pasts, and identity are a few of them. There are a plethora of topics Yanagihara circles back to a few times in these three narratives. The last novel - a somewhat dystopian narrative where there is a totalitarian government and the world is in shambles due to various plagues - takes place at various times between 20, also in New York, and follows the granddaughter of a scientist as she learns to cope with the loss of her grandfather and tries to get to the bottom of her husband's disappearance. The second novel takes place in Manhattan in 1993, where a young paralegal tries to hide his past from his much older and very wealthy partner as the AIDS pandemic rages on.

He struggles with a prearranged marriage and instead falls in love with a mysterious piano player who lives in a dilapidated apartment - and may or may not be planning to steal his fortune. The first one takes place in 1893 in an alternate America and follows David, a rich young man from a well-known family who lives in the shadow of his grandfather while dreaming of finding freedom and making his own path in life. However, these things are all wrapped in 720 pages of small details, loose ends, and narratives within narratives that ultimately make the novel feel like a bit too much. Hanya Yanagihara's To Paradise defies categorization.Īt once a novel that reimagines the world three times and a collection of barely interconnected novels about different people in some of the same places, the book deals with themes like LGBTQ+ relationships in different times and contexts, racism, pandemics, loss, unrequited love, and family.

Hanya yanagihara to paradise