To Paradise: A Novel, Hanya Yanagihara, author; Edoardo Ballerini, Catherine Ho, BD Wong, Feodor Chin, Kurt Kanazawa, narrators
Although the author’s ability to paint images with words is superb, I found the book difficult to read. The totally overriding homosexual themes held little interest for me, but the creativity of the novel and the excellent and graceful use of language, which was read so well by the audio’s narrators, made it so engaging, it was difficult to give up on it. Still, I did have to skim a good deal of it, in order to get through it. The world envisioned is imaginary and the three tales take place in the past, sometime in the near present and in the future. In each section of the book, the same protagonists are placed in different positions regarding the world view, power, emotional need, and character. Their personalities are similar in some cases and different in others. Sometimes, the weak character’s personality is a bit stronger, and at other times, the strong character assumes a lesser role. Sometimes the roles are reversed and a male is a female.
As the novel meanders over approximately two centuries, it manages to cover the political issues of our current day, the possibility of what might evolve if we continue on our current path and the consequences of supporting the wrong causes. Love, devotion, fidelity, family bonds, relationships, poverty, racism, crime, homophobia, disease, laboratory research, freedom of speech, the cancel culture, the nanny state, oppressive regulations, government overreach, education, irresponsible choices, errors in judgment, the lack of privacy and individual rights, the loss of human and civil rights, in short, everything affecting the human condition lives large in each of the stories and in each of the character’s lives.
The novel takes place in a re-imagined United States. Let’s hope nothing near this dystopian universe ever comes to pass because the oppression and depression caused by the lack of hope and inspiration, made life hardly worth living.