Enter the Quaniverse

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It’s always difficult, that second book, after the one you fell in love with. Can you read it on its own merits and try not to compare the two? But this was a hard task for me: I loved ‘A Little Life’, was engrossed in the story, felt deeply for the characters and I’m not sure another book has made me burst out crying (and in public, on a bus, no less).

To Paradise’s three-part structure promised some interest. I enjoyed a similar device in other novels, like Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, or I’m even thinking about Caryl Churchill’s play ‘Cloud Nine’, with two acts, where the same characters are portrayed in each act, separated by years, and the actors swapping roles, so there are interesting connections between them. This is what the cover blurb seemed to say what would happen, with connections between characters in the three parts hinted at, the same names, but for different people, and the same location and similar themes. But the novel is so massive, I actually found it difficult to make those connections, except for the house at Washington Square, that was a clear and easy connection between the sections, but I didn’t find the characters linked as closely as I would have liked to engage me.

And one of the clear themes and links between the sections was that the main characters have some mental illness or are neurodivergent. But because of this, I found it hard to connect with the characters, as they have problems connecting the world, or being understood, or are even in an institution. It was almost an opposite feeling to falling in love with the hero of ‘A Little Life’.

I liked the first section quite a bit: an alternate reality for New York in 1893, a sort of period drama, but with interesting twists: gay relationships are accepted, the US is split into parts. And then, the second section, Hawaii (and NYC) in 1993, I enjoyed the first part, the heir to the Hawaiian throne, if it still existed, navigating a relationship with an older man, and their farewelling of the older man’s friend, dying of AIDS. But then the story shifts to the heir’s father, telling his history in Hawaii, and while I should be interested in this (my mother was born in Hawaii), the narrative became strident and talky, describing the sovereignty movement.

The last section, which jumps time often, back and forth from 2093, and 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10 years before, was what really lost me. Portraying a future ravaged by new iterations of the COVID virus, an authoritarian government, and an overheated city from climate change, I found the vision depressingly familiar, not too big an imaginative leap from the worst of what’s happening now, and again I couldn’t help but compare this dystopia to the many others I’ve read. As a huge fan of Margaret Atwood, I’ve read these themes before in the Maddadam trilogy, which includes Oryx and Crake, and the Handmaid’s Tale: power, authority, governance, secrecy, environmental destruction, and collusion. I found To Paradise’s dystopic future not so engaging or original, just uncomfortably dark and imaginable. Likewise, the flashbacks are all told as a series of letters from one character to another, and the device was too familiar to me, and didn’t really engage me.

So, all in all, really confusing for me, perhaps because of my expectations. Why did I find so much at fault in this novel compared to the author’s previous one? I managed not to read other reviews of the book until I’d written my own: now, I’m off to see what everyone else thinks!

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And as a post-script, yes, I did read the other reviews. Fascinating to me to see the mix from professional reviews of rave reviews and poor reviews. It looks like the Times Literary Supplement has really given it a sledging, though I couldn’t read more than the first paragraph because of the paywall. One reviewer pointed out another big issue that was dissatisfying with the book: the author doesn’t give us endings. It’s ambiguous to what has happened. But as an artistic decision, I find this really lacking. It’s not like a make your own adventure: how great is it for us to imagine what happens! The readers have gotten through a ton of text to be left with … a lack of endings. Pretty infuriating.

One of the community reviewers from Goodreads pointed out something I found very interesting. I know that in this promotion tour, Yanagihara is leading with the statement that as an artist, she can write about anyone she wants, and inhabit anyone. I think this statement needs to be a lot more nuanced. Of course, writers should be able to inhabit different people, but it has to be done with sensitivity, respect and some understanding. Lionel Shriver putting on a big arse Mexican hat at a writer’s conference and being obnoxious about what she can or can’t do is not the way to go. I very much respected Yangihara’s story of a gay man and other gay men in ‘A Little Life’ because it felt honest and that it told me something about humanity. But as the reviewer pointed out for ‘To Paradise’, it’s fine to write gay characters, but when so many of them are gay, the question is whether the author is illuminating anything about the gay or human experience by doing so: for ‘A Little Life’, the answer was yes for me but for ‘To Paradise’, the answer, sadly, was no.

Jack by A.M. Homes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I remember, back in the days, being very impressed with A.M. Homes’s short fiction, but I lost track of her. In any case, I recently came across ‘Jack’, her first novel, written when she was 19! And I was interested enough in the pitch, a teenage boy whose Dad comes out to him. I have to admit though, that I don’t like teenagers all that much (and wouldn’t have liked myself as a teenager) so at times, I found Jack to be annoying in a teenage way. The voice may have been authentic, but it was not my favourite voice. And the gay dad plot point is not the biggest focus of the book. Still, sometimes while reading this novel, I found myself having so naturally fallen into the story that it surprised me. The story is a pretty gentle one, without much drama until the end, so it was Homes’s writing, not showy but skilful and engaging, that drew me in. I should really read something current of hers as this novel came out over 30 years ago.

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Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For many years, Winterson’s ‘The Passion’ was one of my favourite books. There was a perfect melding of myth and history, poetry and a sweeping romanticism that appealed to the romantic young man that I was. But perhaps as I’m less romantic than I once was, Winterson’s ‘Lighthousekeeping’ appealed to me less. While I thought her famed debut novel had a different tone, and voice, most of her other books that I’ve read have had the same voice and feel as this one: Short, portentous sentences, short chapters and short books that demonstrate imagination and reach, a wry sense of humour, and a love of stories, literature and storytelling. I was pretty on board with ‘Lighthousekeeping’ for much of it. I do find Winterson’s writing beautiful and some of the phrases and images are compelling. And yet, when her writing doesn’t work for me, it’s because it feels like the story, myth or characters are not tethered to the earth. There’s something SO ridiculous about it that I’ve fallen out of the spell. For example, the protagonist, Silver, born into a house at such a slope that nothing stayed in place, including her mother, lost to a fall on page 7. Instead of mythic, I found it silly. And while I would fall back under the spell of the book, we never spend enough time with any one character to really connect with them: the idea most central of all is that of storytelling, which has been used in so many great novels—that all there is left is telling stories, that all there is to do is tell stories, that all of life is a story—this didn’t feel to me a brilliant piece of work. Late in the book, there is a scene where Silver has grown up and is romancing a woman, and while it is all very romantic and quite beautifully written, it has NOTHING to do with the rest of the novel. WTF? All in all, this book is a borderline three stars for me, almost two stars, but I do have an affection for some of Winterson’s writing. My edition of the paperback, interestingly, has a ‘P.S.’ section with some thoughts from Winterson herself and an interview, the sort of thing these days you’d find from a Google search after reading a book you’re interested in. I guess this also was a factor tipping my rating to three stars, as it shows Winterson as born to be a writer, committed to her craft and to imagination, and that her dedication to storytelling is sincere. Before writing this, I came across the NYT review of this book, by Benjamin Kunkel (google it) which I’m aligned with, though he’s much more eloquent than I, and much more critical. ‘The novel concentrates the worst qualities of her writing.’ Ouch.

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Flights Of Love by Bernhard Schlink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What I like about a collection of short stories, over, say, a novel, is that the landscape is wider, if not necessarily as deep. So, with these stories, I was introduced to a range of characters in a range of circumstances, unfamiliar to me yet engaging, and it felt like the writing was true. The prose is straightforward, not particularly decorative or showy, much like many of the protagonists. So, from the author of The Reader, which was made into a well-received movie, seven short stories, mostly with German men or young men as the protagonists, often negotiating the weight of Germany’s history, looking for love, familial and carnal, or to understand love and its betrayals through affairs and flings. They didn’t inspire me to write much about them but I did enjoy them.

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