Editors Reads Verdict
A more diffuse and deliberately frustrating novel than A Little Life, To Paradise rewards patience with its formal architecture while demanding that readers tolerate significant ambiguity about what it is attempting.
What We Loved
- The 2093 section is among the most chilling dystopian fiction published this decade
- The formal architecture — recurring names, parallel structures — is intellectually satisfying
- Yanagihara's prose remains at the highest level throughout
Minor Drawbacks
- The 1893 section moves very slowly and some readers disengage before the architecture becomes clear
- More deliberately alienating than A Little Life, which may frustrate readers expecting similar emotional intensity
- At 720 pages, the diffuse structure feels excessive to some readers
Key Takeaways
- → Freedom and safety exist in permanent tension — every era offers one at the expense of the other
- → The same desires — for love, protection, escape — recur across centuries without resolution
- → Totalitarianism arrives gradually, presented as public health necessity
| Author | Hanya Yanagihara |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Pages | 720 |
| Published | January 11, 2022 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Dystopian |
| Difficulty | Advanced |
| Best For | Readers of A Little Life prepared for a more challenging and architecturally complex novel. |
Three Centuries, One Building
To Paradise takes place in the same Washington Square townhouse across three different versions of American history: 1893, in an alternate America where same-sex relationships are legal in certain free states; 1993, at the height of the AIDS crisis; and 2093, in a New York reshaped by climate disaster and pandemic response into a state of near-total surveillance and control.
Three recurring figures connect the sections: David, Charles, and Edward appear in each era with different relationships and different fates. The names are the same; the people are not.
What the Novel Is Doing
The novel’s thesis is stated in its title and tested across seven hundred pages: what does it mean to go to paradise, when paradise has always involved trading one freedom for another? The 1893 section is about the trade between security and authenticity; the 1993 section is about the devastation of a generation and the protective love that tries to compensate; the 2093 section — the novel’s most powerful movement — is about the trade between safety and liberty, told through a narrator whose consciousness has been so thoroughly shaped by authoritarian normalisation that she cannot see what she has lost.
The third section reads as a masterclass in the dystopian genre: Yanagihara shows the inside of a totalitarian state through a character who finds it reasonable.
Our rating: 4.0/5 — Formally audacious and frequently extraordinary, if less immediately devastating than its predecessor.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "To Paradise" about?
Three novellas set in the same New York apartment in 1893, 1993, and 2093, connected by recurring names and the theme of freedom — what it means, what it costs, and whether it is ever truly available.
Who should read "To Paradise"?
Readers of A Little Life prepared for a more challenging and architecturally complex novel.
What are the key takeaways from "To Paradise"?
Freedom and safety exist in permanent tension — every era offers one at the expense of the other The same desires — for love, protection, escape — recur across centuries without resolution Totalitarianism arrives gradually, presented as public health necessity
Is "To Paradise" worth reading?
A more diffuse and deliberately frustrating novel than A Little Life, To Paradise rewards patience with its formal architecture while demanding that readers tolerate significant ambiguity about what it is attempting.
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