I recently finished reading two novels: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, and To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. Both of them are large, complicated stories. Both of them cover several time periods. Both of them have powerful messages for us.

Cloud Cuckoo Land goes back and forth from the 1500’s to present day, to the future. Occasionally I had a bit of trouble following, but I think this was mainly a function of the fact that I couldn’t read the book consistently, there often being several days in between sitting down with the book. So I take responsibility for this minor negative aspect!

The one unifying feature throughout the various timelines of the novel is an ancient manuscript discovered, preserved, and translated. The ancient story it presents is called, in English, Cloud Cuckoo Land.

I will not go into any level of description. I suspect it would be beyond me to do this story justice. But I will say that anyone who ventures into Cloud Cuckoo Land will not be disappointed! It is a very gripping story, and ultimately gives a picture of hope for us as a human population.

To Paradise in some ways is similar to Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is structured into three books, each dealing with a different time period. Book One happens in 1893, Book Two in 1993, and (you guessed it?) Book Three 2093. To Hanya Yanagihara’s credit, she doesn’t explain much, and sometimes that can be a bit confusing. But there are characters in each of these time periods who have the same or similar names. And there are some similar locations where the stories take place. But each book presents a quite distinct story.

Again, I am not going to go into any sort of detail, for the same reasons I couldn’t do that for the above book; but I will say that this is a gripping story. It presents history with some very interesting wrinkles. And it projects the future in some disturbing and interesting ways.

I will say this: the novel has a quite melancholy air to it. The future which Hanya Yanagihara paints is very dystopian. It is easy to see how the author projects today’s world into the future and where society might be leading. And it is not a pleasant image. It is downright discouraging, to be honest. And I think this is because it is quite obvious from today’s world where she gets her ideas. We very easily could be heading into directions as she depicts them. This aspect of the novel can be taken as a direct warning of what we could face in the future.

So, if you have a tendency to view today with critical, depressing opinions, this book will certainly support your leanings!

The hopeful message is that no matter how bleak society becomes, there is always hope. The human spirit seems able to rise above the darkness, no matter how extreme, of disintegrating governments and societies.

One aspect of To Paradise is its depiction of gay relationships. Even in Book One there is much more acceptance of homosexuality than in today’s world. Again, Hanya Yanagihara does a masterful job of just allowing the story to develop, without explaining much. It takes awhile at points in the story to realize just what we are reading about! Again, due to my somewhat disjointed reading times, I would become confused, having forgotten who some of the characters were and previous parts of the story. But is was always rewarding to pick up the theme.

So, once again, if you want a good hefty read, I highly recommend To Paradise. It is a long (700 pages!), very complicated story, well put together, and worth the effort it takes to read.