The character in Namrata Poddar's novel works in a call center and dreams of a new life in the U.S. but once there, she and other emigrants feel "othered" at work and in daily life.
(Image credit: 7.13 Books)
UnCovered review by Collette Jones, Librarian, ACLS Pleasantville Branch
Hanya Yanagihara novels can feel unsettling and miserable and evoke a luxurious, suffering emotion. A discomfort lingers around Yanagihara’s To Paradise. It is a big book with a lot of pain. In interviews, Yanagihara has described her central theme as the duality between the dullness of safety and the flamboyance of danger. Her books are designed to play these two elements against each other: from the individual and also from a society impact point of view. The structure is complicated and messy. To Paradise is made up of three sections: one novella, one set of paired short stories, and one final novel. All take place in the same townhouse in New York’s Washington Square at hundred-year intervals, and all concern a cast of characters with the same names. At the center of each section are David, Edward, and Charles or Charlie.
In 1893, David is a wealthy young man of society in a world where gay marriage is legal, in love with poor and charming Edward but betrothed to rich and respectable Charles. In 1993, there are two Davids: one a young man in New York, living with his wealthy older lover Charles, and David’s father, living in Hawaii, in an abusive relationship with impoverished Edward. In 2093, the protagonist is a young woman named Charlie, who lives in a dystopian New York ravished by pandemics, in a loveless marriage with Edward and fascinated by a mysterious stranger named David. The impossibility of finding any continuity between the various Davids is perplexing. But, while it’s true that none of the characters of To Paradise are the same from section to section despite their shared names, there is coherence. The Davids are generally the protagonists of each section, laboring to choose between a life of safety and order and a life of danger and excitement. Most compelling about these books, what makes them so readable, is at the same time that they are so grotesque in their tragedies, especially Yanagihara’s depictions of pain and torment, they can come across as sensational playing of characters that never quite fit into the real world.
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