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Today, "Vers le paradis" by Hanya Yanagihara was published on September 7, 2022 by Éditions Grasset
Emily Café Powell, contributor to the 20 Minutes
Books reading group
and blogger, recommends
Vers le paradis
by Hanya Yanagihara, published on September 7, 2022 by Éditions Grasset.
His favorite quote:
“In this night vision, Washington Square was not a prison, or a place to be dreaded – it was his home, their home, and this family was theirs.
He realized that he was finally home.
»
Why this book?
Because it's a broad and ambitious story,
which could almost constitute a trilogy: three novels in one, which nevertheless echo each other.
The form can be surprising, even slightly destabilizing.
It's a great exercise in fiction!
Because the American Hanya Yanagihara addresses
universal themes such as love, madness, illness, passion, reason, mourning.
She reflects on the meaning of home, where one is at home, where one can be whoever one wants.
It is a very powerful novel.
Because the characters are painfully endearing,
including their faults, their vices.
Because the alternative America revealed by the author
is fascinating.
That of 1893, for example, imagines a country divided into several enclaves, with very different customs.
The one where the hero lives advocates freedom of worship and marriage, a concept that contrasts with the end of the 19th century.
The reader thus has the impression of reading a historical novel… before remembering that this is not exactly the case.
Because this novel is a surprise
that does not take us where we imagined.
It presents situations that seem familiar before subtly diverging from what we can know.
And a novel that surprises, that astonishes the reader, is always a good thing.
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
The same townhouse in New York, three different eras, three novels embedded in one:
Vers le paradis
offers the portrait of an "other" America.
Characters.
A bit like in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the first names respond to each other, David, Charles, Eden… The novel opens with the story of a young, well-to-do New Yorker hesitating between a marriage of convenience and passion.
Classic?
Not really, because in this alternative New York of 1893, our hero hesitates between two men.
Places.
New York is the anchor of the story, but it is another New York, different, past, present, future...
The time.
The novel proposes a stopover in 1893, before taking a leap in time in 1893. Finally, the ultimate time stroll in 2093, in a distant and less than rosy future.
The author.
Hanya Yanagihara made a big splash when her previous novel,
Une vie comme les autres
, was released, which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award!
This book was read with
a touch of destabilization!
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