To Paradise

Somewhere along the middle, the pages got rearranged and out of order. I wasn't able to continue with the third story. Please look into it.

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara is hands down one of the best books I’ve read in 2022. Effortlessly smooth, fast-paced and elegant writing makes it one hell of a ride to read. The characters are layered and rich, the plot is enriched with plethora of emotions and the weaving together of all the stories with recurring names, backdrops and the general melancholic aura makes it a mesmerising read. I never got bored as there was something constantly happening in all the three stories.I was actually hesitant to pick this up because of its mammoth size and I remember that A Little Life had a slower pace (although I loved that too after I finished reading it) and I was not in a mood to entertain a slump, but the flow came as a surprise and I found it way better than I expected it to be.All in all, To Paradise might not have worked for some people but I feel it doesn’t deserve the bashing it’s getting. People took time to recognise A Little Life and I’m sure a couple years down the lane, To Paradise will get its due as well. Absolutely stunning read!

This ade me cry and sob and left me absolutely POSITIVE that no book I read will ever come close to crafting the story with as much realistic heartbreak as this one does.To Paradise is the latest by Yanagihara and oh, god. If you loved A Little Life (or were emotionally broken by it, irreparably) then you should give this book a chance to do the same to you.To Paradise is much broader in painting the nuances of human life and character than A Little Life did. It is made up of 3 books - each following a different set of characters with their own different stories. But they all are set in the same grim and dark world of disease and love. With these different storylines, Yanagihara will take you far in the past and then jerk you suddenly into an imagined future - a dystopia. It's quite the ride.The characters of To Paradise seem ready to slip off the page - that's how real they seem. They kind of reminded me of that strange feeling I sometimes get when I look at strangers and realise how each of them have a life of their own, how they're a complete person in themselves and not just a passing character in my story. It's not possible to hate any character Yanagihara writes. Her words make them the central character in their own story. Every sentence she writes is powerful. Every page is unforgettable.Just as A Little Life focussed a lot on personal emotions and difficult aspects of personal life, this book, I feel, focussed much more on the world even as it explored the individual lives of its many characters - we find a commentary on colonialism, disease (which reminded me of A Little Life again), love and relationships, pandemics and their social characteristics, and a lot more. Caught between ideas of utopia and dystopia, this book questioned my mental image of a paradise and humans' perpetual seeking of it.It's strange how Yanagihara named one book on life and another on afterlife. Makes me wonder what she will write after this and exactly how many tissues I will need for that book...

This is going to be rather long, so I want you to bear with me as I write my thoughts on this novel without providing any spoilers. The book was humongous, not only in its size but its story too. The author, in this book, has chartered new territories with different time periods and alternative realities. Here, she is dealing with nobility, kings, queens; the people in power across her parallel universes. She has let her imagination soar high, much beyond what we readers could have expected of her given her previous success. It is divided into three parts.The first part is the story of a man who is questioning his worth, his singlehood when his siblings have married and are having the ideal family lives. And then comes two men he is introduced too. I was hooked to this young man's story and his quest to choose who he really wanted to be with. He is aware that his choices will determine both his life with the man and the future that awaits him. I found it beautiful how the author meandered us through this perilous path and made us inquisitive throughout the story as to what is his choice really going to be.The second part begins where there is another young man who is quite happily settled with his partner who is older to him. Here, the young man is questioning the choices he's made and if this relationship is worth it. He knows how much he loves his man but his youth is making him wonder what would life have been if not with the man who has given him everything he's ever wanted. It seemed as though the youth, from the previous story who had made a choice, is still very curious what more life could be. I loved how sensitive the author was, how beautifully, she has tried to unearth the quest to seek more from this little life, because as people we have such long, spiralling histories and settling with one goal isn't enough. We always question, look for answers, and let our uncertain future and jagged histories shape us into who we become.And, at last, comes the story that occupied the majority of the novel and here the author returned to her usual device of making her readers as uncomfortable as she could with her haunting imaginations. In the future, there is a girl, so diminished, so reduced, so terribly lonely that you want to run toward her and hug her and tell her that I am sorry life has been thus and that I wish it we could do something to change it. She lives in a world, a future where the whole connotation of the word future means anything but positive, or the progressive ideas we attach to it. I felt so sad, so hurt. This was a girl looking for love, looking for the comfort of her home, the home that only her grandfather had provided. The youth from the first story who kept questioning despite having all the privileges he had, the youth from the second story who kept questioning the love and happiness he had, here, the same youth was grieving in silence because discontentment with your life, can only take you so far.I loved the book. I think it was a very very thoughtful book, written with a lot of sensitivity. I think it is necessary to read it without keeping her previous novel in the background. She is an excellent writer, she deserves her readers to accept her in the many forms of stories she wishes to tell.

livro maravilhoso podem comprar pq é muito bom

Yo había leído a little life y está entre mis libros más preciados, por eso decidí leer este libro. No tiene una secuencia coherente, quedan inconclusas muchas cosas. No me gusto nada.

Wasn’t too happy to receive the book with smudges on it

I read a lot of “light” literature as I have a demanding job and often just want entertaining when I read. But from time to time I fancy something more thought provoking or that makes me consider what I believe is right and wrong. This author does that with every book she writes. I’m not a book reviewer so won’t try to talk about the deeper meanings in her work or compare this book to other famous tomes. But I will say that this is certainly one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Para quem espera algo do teor de "Uma vida pequena", lamento informar que este livro rompe com esta expectativa.A autora consegue, de forma primorosa, tecer as histórias encontradas neste livro de maneira impressionante. É uma das maiores autoras contemporâneas com toda certeza.