I owe a friend an apology.
I used to tease a former work friend about her love for “This Is Us” on NBC. Like a lot of people, I was enamored with its first season but it became apparent pretty quickly there would be no happy endings — that its loyal fans would be subjected to cruelty upon cruelty, episode after episode.
“Tragedy porn!” I declared, joking with her that I didn’t want to know what happened as she continued to follow The Big Three. I’d occasionally read a recap, but Rebecca’s dementia was the last straw. And there was a part of me that struggled with the concept of going back to a fictitious abuser again and again. “Great story? More like great anxiety!”
Then I picked up Hanya Yanagihara’s “To Paradise,” and took two months to complete a literary version of a self-own. I don’t know if there’s a single person in this woman’s universe that ever gets a happy ending. And I love her and hate her for it.
This was my Strand pick while dropping my daughter off, way back in January, for a spring semester in NYC. It sat like a doorstop on my TBR pile all winter and spring, partially because I knew this was going to be a COMMITMENT once I started. At 700 pages, “To Paradise” is not a weekend read. And it’s a bit of an oddly-constructed, albeit really interesting one. Three stories in three different times, loosely tied together through geographical references and naming conventions, of a life that could have been or could be in what we know as the United States. The first of a grandfather’s struggle to help his youngest orphan child to secure a happy relationship, the second about a young man confronting the dreams of his father, and the third, of another grandfather figure trying to save the life of a granddaughter — in a future painfully close to what could be coming to a neighborhood near you. (That’s a big ‘ol trigger warning for anyone who does not want to read about deathly pandemics and climate change. Goodness gracious.)
This third story — of Charles and Charlie — just about did me in. Charles’ letters to his dear friend Peter throughout the mid- to -late-2000s, alongside Charlie’s commentary on life in 2093 New York City is harrowing and emotional and just damn tragic. If illness and impossible decisions made by state governments isn’t enough to make you cry, Yanagihara throws in child loss in multiple forms, oppressive regimes and doomed love stories to boot. It’s “This is Us” on steroids. And I kept going back for more, chapter after chapter. There were multiple occasions I slammed it shut in reader’s agony.
“What the hell is David thinking?”
“Oh my God, Peter …”
“Jeebus, Charles …”
“Nathaniel … Noooooooooo!”
(The beauty in these quotes is that since the names are used repeatedly throughout each of the three settings, you can read this and not know what the heck I am talking about, so … enjoy figuring these out!”)
Having fallen in love with Yanagihara’s “A Little Life” — also a mad case of tragedy porn and one of the epic reads of this last decade, I knew in part what I was gearing up for. She is not not about happy endings and that’s OK. Her ability to reach into my chest and pull out my heart and smash it into a million pieces is just the rush some people crave. And while I certainly am going to require a mental health read after this — Sedaris, maybe, Bohjalian’s latest … I would also recommend this to anyone up for a very long, very detail-oriented read that focuses on the bonds between family and friends and her daring to imagine parallel universes from the one in which we currently reside.
I was happy to spend the summer with you, Hanya, and Charles, Edward, Peter, Charlie, David, Kawika and Eden. Love comes in many forms and through many sacrifices and these stories are a beautiful illustration of just that.
LitzyDitz 