To Paradise

From the bestselling author of A Little Life comes a daring, beautiful book about lovers, family, grief, and the illusory promise of utopia that spans three centuries and three distinct renditions of the American experiment.

New York is a component of the Free States in an alternative history of 1893 America, where individuals are free to live and love anyone they choose (or so it appears). The delicate young scion of a wealthy family, attracted to a lovely music instructor despite having little money, rejects being betrothed to a respectable suitor. A young Hawaiian guy lives with his much older, wealthy girlfriend in a 1993 Manhattan under attack from the AIDS pandemic, keeping his difficult upbringing and father's fate a secret. In 2093, a prominent scientist's traumatized granddaughter attempts to make sense of life without him while also trying to unravel the mystery of her husband's disappearances in a society torn apart by epidemics and authoritarian government.

The three movements are seamlessly integrated into a captivating and clever symphony, with recurrent sounds and motifs that enhance and complement each other: A townhouse in Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park; disease and its exorbitant treatments; wealth and destitution; the strong and the weak; race; nationalism and the definition of family; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful and of revolutionaries; and the gradual realization that there can be no such place as an earthly paradise. Their examination of the characteristics that make us human—not just the personalities, but these Americas as a whole—unites them. Loneliness, need, shame, love, and fear.

In addition to being a fin de siècle book with amazing literary impact, To Paradise is also a great work of emotion. Yanagihara's grasp of the agony that results from not being able to defend the people we love—partners, lovers, kids, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—is what gives this amazing book its immense impact.