“TO PARADISE”

By Hanya Yanagihara

Doubleday ($32.50)

The title of Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 blockbuster “A Little Life” was funny because of the size of the book, which wasn’t little. At first, the title of her new novel “To Paradise” (which also isn’t little) might seem similarly funny, since it doesn’t contain much that resembles paradise.

Then again, the title is “To Paradise,” not  “A Paradise.” To Paradise suggests a direction. Or better yet, a rallying cry: To paradise! One imagines a religious leader assembling their followers and exhorting them to join a march to the promised land.

“To Paradise” features a few visionary leaders in its pages, but it’s ultimately less interested in religious or political movements than the way visions of the future guide human lives. Book I focuses on David Bingham, who descends from a wealthy family in an alternate version of 19th century New York. This New York belongs to the Free States, an independent nation within the US where gay marriage is legal but Black people are not granted full citizenship. David’s great-great-grandfather founded the Free States, but David struggles to define his identity and considers running away to California with his lover.

Book II begins in New York in the early 1990’s, where another David Bingham and his older boyfriend Charles are throwing a party for one of Charles’ former lovers, who is chronically ill and travelling to Switzerland the next day to end his life. After the party ends, Charles and David are alone on the couch. New York is besieged by the AIDS crisis, David has just been reminded of his turbulent family history, and one of Charles’ oldest friends will soon be dead. In this setting, David produces a remarkable Utopian vision of “an unbroken chain of houses, the people they loved resurrected and restored, an eternity of meals and conversations and arguments and forgivenesses.” Moments like this, which recur throughout “To Paradise,” remind readers that imaginative vision can rise to meet moments of crisis.

Still, the variety of these visions also reminds readers that imagination can go in any direction, and that one person’s paradise might have nothing to do with another’s. So what sort of paradise does “To Paradise” envision? What resources does it provide to help readers meet their moment?

The best answer to these questions comes in the novel’s third and final Book, which takes place in a dystopian future version of New York across the years 2043-2093. The Book’s narrative alternates between a speculative virologist (Charles Griffith) and his granddaughter Charlie, who has suffered an unidentified cognitive impairment after taking an experimental drug to combat a pandemic in 2070. Charlie remains engaged enough to live a stable life, but she knows something is wrong and that she’s incapable of fully understanding the world around her. Her voice is heartbreaking without being overly sentimental and reads as an homage to Kazuo Ishiguro, one of Ms. Yanagihara’s favorite authors. The qualities of this tribute—humble, attentive, and thoughtful—seem like worthy resources to meet moments of crisis.

Dr. Griffith’s sections in Book III consist of emails and letters to an old friend over the course of 50 years. For the most part, they detail America’s drift towards an authoritarian police state in response to an ongoing series of pandemics. There are familiar elements in the correspondence, including Dr. Griffith’s son rebelling and joining a resistance movement. But what ultimately speaks louder than the information in Dr. Griffith’s correspondence is the fact of its existence: two friends in constant contact over 50 years, remembering birthdays, remarking on life events, and bearing witness to each other’s lives.

At the end of this wild, energizing novel, when Charlie needs to flee the US, Dr. Griffith’s friend tries to engineer her escape. We don’t know if he succeeds, but the attempt may remind readers that friendship can also be a worthy resource for responding to an indifferent, crisis-ridden world.

Dan Kubis teaches in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. He thanks the students in his Seminar in Composition: Gender Studies course for introducing him to Hanya Yanagihara’s fiction.

First Published: January 9, 2022, 11:00 a.m.