Finished: To Paradise (Yanagihara) This 700 page novel is basically three books in one, somehow interwoven, but at the same time not at all. As you get to know the characters in each section, you see that the same names and surnames are used over and over, as is the same house in Washington Square, though most of the same-named people are not related at all, at least as far as the reader knows. The first section begins in 1893 America where the country is divided after the Civil War into the Free States, the Colonies, the West and the North. New York is part of the Free States where black people are not welcome to live, but are aided in their journeys to get to safe places. However, in the Free States, homosexuals are free to live and marry, and as a matter of fact, it's more common than different sex marriages. We meet the first Nathaniel in 1893, Nathaniel Bingham, a rich banker and founding member of the Free States who is determined to find a marriage match for his grandson, David, who is homosexual like his two siblings, but has never been as socially adept as they have been. David is underwhelmed by his grandfather's choice for him, a man twenty years his senior named Charles Griffith, from a fine family. When David decides he's in love with Edward, the very poor music instructor at one of their family foundations, he shocks both his grandfather and Charles when he decides to run off with Edward to The West...to paradise. In the second section, the year is 1993 and we are introduced to David, a paralegal at a law firm who is in a relationship with a very senior partner in the law firm, Charles Griffith. The AIDS epidemic is thriving in America and takes a few of Charles and David's friends as David questions whether he should tell Charles about his father, the true heir to the Hawaiian kingdom who had deserted his title when Hawaii decided to become it's own nation. We leave David pondering this question while the second part of this second section turns into a long letter written to David by his dying father (also a David). In it, his father explains about his life and how he let a friend he's known since childhood, Edward, run roughshod over his life and move them to a parcel of land in Hawaii that belonged to the lost kingdom, leaving his mother, David's grandmother to raise the younger David. Long disgusted with his father, David moved to the States and hadn't seen his father in years. At the end of the letter, as the bedridden father imagines he's up and walking in a garden each night, we assume that he has drifted away to death as his last words are that he'll see his son soon as he travels to see him....to paradise. The third section of the book is by far the largest part of the book and begins in 2093 in New York, which is no longer called New York, in a world that has been inundated by plagues and pandemics and has turned into a totalitarian dictatorship run by the state. There are scientists constantly trying to identify new diseases, while at the same time trying to develop cures for them. Charles Griffith is one such scientist who years ago moved his young family, husband Nathaniel and young son David, from Hawaii, where they were all happy, to New York where they lived in Section 8, while Charles became more and more entangled with the state. This section goes back and forth from 2043 where Charles is writing letters about his life to a dear friend in New Britain, and 2093 where Charles's granddaughter is married and living with her husband, Edward, in a marriage arranged by Charles . We learn how Charles and Nathaniel's marriage deteriorates as Nathaniel grows unhappy and David becomes an unhappy, rebellious teenager. David's rebellion goes farther than that...he becomes one of the insurgents who believes the State is lying about the need for all of their liberties to be so limited, and that they are thrusting pandemics on people purposefully to try and control them. David and Charles become estranged, but when David takes up with a female insurgent, she gives birth to Charles' granddaughter who is basically left to be raised by Charles and Nathaniel after David is executed for being an insurgent and the baby's mother, being less than maternal, signs over her rights. Before dying, David names his daughter Charlie. Charlie is a bright, precocious, inquisitive, beautiful child until the pandemic of 2070 where she is felled by the illness that kills most everyone it touches. She is given a controversial medicine that cures her, but leaves her with pockmarks, the loss of hair (which grows back very limp), a personality with very little affect and much slower cognitive reasoning. After Nathaniel dies, several years after their divorce, Charles and Charlie move into the house Nathaniel inherited on Washington Square. (Yes, the same house.) In Charles' letters we see how he dedicates his life to caring for Charlie and teaching her how to live in society, while continuing to work for the state. As he gets older and realizes he won't be alive for all of Charlie's life, he makes it a mission to arrange a marriage for her where she will be taken care of at all costs. The man who agrees to marry Charlie, Edward, is a homosexual who is in love with a man, but by this time in the country's history, homosexual marriages are not allowed and relationships can be dangerous. It's interesting to see the world through Charlie's eyes in 2093 and then back through Charles' eyes in the years leading up to the end of the story. Charles is executed by insurgents who briefly take over the state not long after Charlie is married. But, in his last letter to his friend in New Britain, Charles pleads with his friend to please get Charlie out of America if he can, to a free life in New Britain. As Charlie's story comes to an end, after her husband has just passed away, a boat comes to get her and she realizes she is going to start her new life with the help of her beloved grandfather's trusted friend. She's going...to paradise. It was a long, but very good read. I loved A Little Life by Yanagihara, and this book was as compelling, but in different ways. Here is the blurb on Amazon that probably explains things better and more concisely than I just did. :-)
"In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
To Paradise is a fin de siecle novel of marvelous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot."
