I was roughly three-quarters of the way through Hanya Yanagihara’s massive third novel, To Paradise, when I felt like I could go on no longer. I wasn’t traumatized by the many scenes of suffering, nor was I bothered by the prose, which is energetic and polished, if at times overladen with simile. I was, however, extremely bored.
To Paradise—the follow-up to Yanagihara’s best-selling 2015 novel, A Little Life—is an epic told in three parts, each set in and around New York City’s Washington Square. Book One takes place in the late 19th century, reimagined by Yanagihara as a kind of progressive Gilded Age. In this alternate version of history, New York is not part of the United States but rather of the “Free States,” a small, independent nation in which gay marriage is legal.
