YanagiharaRama Part II

Scathing reviews and discussions of marriage and disability in 'To Paradise' with Astrid Edwards.

Welcome to the second of three YanagiharaRama installments! The first one was a blast, and covered A Little Life and Yanagihara’s career. This week Astrid Edwards and I go very deep into To Paradise (accompanied by several funny gifs that Google threw at me when I searched ‘paradise’). The final one in mid-April will be completely free and open to all. It’s a scoop! A previously unpublished interview and profile of Yanagihara written by Anne Summers.

I’ve also got a bunch of events coming up, maybe I’m coming to a city near you?

• Tomorrow in Sydney at the State Library of New South Wales the next B List Bookclub guest is Jane Caro discussing her novel, The Mother. It’ll be livestreamed too.

• This weekend I’ve got one event at Newcastle Writers Festival on Sunday 3 April where I’ll be discussing Who Gets to be Smart.

• I’ll be appearing at two great Brisbane Writers Festival events (with Clem Ford, Anita Heiss, Jess Hill, Rick Morton, and Yves Rees—what lineups!!) on Saturday 7 May. 

I chose Astrid (who you might remember from RooneyRama) specifically to join me on this journey To Paradise (ha ha) for a few reasons. First and foremost, because we are friends and I love talking about books with her. Secondly, because she reads a shitton of books of all genres and isn’t afraid of giving honest (i.e. negative) reviews. And thirdly, because (as you’ll read below) I felt that disability was one of the core themes in To Paradise, and as a contributor to Growing Up Disabled in Australia, I thought Astrid might have opinions she’d want to share about the ways Yanagihara deals with this.

This is a special edition of News & Reviews, which means it’s paywalled. Subscribing is the cost of a magazine a month, but you get this delight each week! The generosity of the hundreds of readers who have already paid meant I was able to offer Astrid an honorarium for her time and expertise. I’d love to be able to plan more exciting writing and guests, so please consider subscribing. If you can’t afford it, just reply to this email and let me know, and we can work something out.