Part two of this story is a long letter from David’s father to David, revealing the story of their family to be that of a displaced Hawaiian royal family. His father has just attempted to make contact via letter. As David watches Charles care for and farewell a number of loved ones (and past lovers) who are succumbing to ‘the illness’ (one can only assume it is AIDs), he reflects on the physical and mental decline of his father. Here, illness casts a spectre over the action once more as a young paralegal, also named David Bingham, takes part in a secret relationship with a partner at his law firm named Charles Griffith. The second section, ‘Lipo-Wao-Nahele’, is a story in two parts set in 1993. Frustratingly, the section ends as David is about to reveal the answer. By the end of this section, David is faced with a choice that made lead him out of the security of the Free States. The answer is found in Charles Griffith, an older widower who promises safety and security.īut David finds himself instead falling for Edward Bishop, a penniless music teacher who may or may not be who he says he is. Nathaniel reaches out to a marriage broker in order to ensure David will always have someone to care for him. It has also meant that David is the most isolated member of his family, and the only one as yet not married. David suffers from a mysterious recurring illness which has meant that his family have always treated him as fragile. In this first section, called ‘Washington Square’ for the grand townhouse where much of the action takes place, we follow David Bingham, one of three Bingham siblings set to inherit portions of a vast estate from their grandfather Nathaniel. Outside of the Free States, homosexuality is still illegal. The schism between states appears to largely be based on the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and around half of the characters in this section (and more than half of those in the book’s entirety) are part of same sex marriages. The United States is divided and New York is part of the Free States. This time, she imagines a counterfactual history which begins in a Henry Jamesian 1893. Spanning three interlinked novellas each set 100 years apart, To Paradise is a book about family, obligation, tradition and – as you may already know– illness.įollowing on from the critical and commercial success of her Booker Prize shortlisted sophomore novel, A Little Life, Yanagihara has also once again chosen to explore the lives of queer characters, specifically men in same sex relationships. That it has taken me until now to finish it says as much about its length (some 700 plus pages) as it does about its subject matter.

To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara’s third novel, was released in January 2022.

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