To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Like Hanya Yanagihara’s previous novel, the beautiful and hugely depressing A Little

Life, To Paradise is mammoth. Clocking in at over 700 pages, it’s the kind of book you’ll want to note down key character names and stories as you go. Yes, it’s that confusing – with three parts, each one is set in a different time zone, with the same character names – but they’re entirely different people. The first is an alternate view of 1890s New York, the second flits between 1990s America experiencing the Aids crisis and Hawaii, and the third is a dystopian look at the future, where the world is ravaged by pandemics, controlled by a totalitarian state. Each story is full of love and loss.