Третья книга 2093, судя по критической рецензии Ребекки Пановки для Harper’s, — слепленная из газетных статей, домыслов и википедии...

Третья книга 2093, судя по критической рецензии Ребекки Пановки для Harper’s, — слепленная из газетных статей, домыслов и википедии алармистская дистопия, где мир пережил несколько эпидемий и откатился к традиционалистскому обществу под тоталитарным правлением.

Статья, кстати, совершенно замечательная и обращает внимание на то самое отсутствие редактуры у романа. Например, об умении Янагихары в стилизацию Пановка пишет:

Yanagihara does not have an ear for the language of the 1890s, and she alternates between the anachronistic (“I’ll take it from here,” one character says to his valet) and the archaic (“I am only one-and-twenty!” or “over the past twelvemonth”). Some of her attempts to sound old-timey result in incorrect word usage, as when freed slaves are granted “citizenry” rather than “citizenship”; a frenzied emotional state is “excessively writ” rather than “overwrought.” Occasionally the grammar gets garbled: “although she would have had to accede to his request, he was too intimidated to do so,” or “because he is a man for whom your happiness will always be his concern.” Political subtleties are not Yanagihara’s chief interest, and we’re treated to small talk like “Do you think we should allow the Negroes in?” and “But Negroes are not people like us.”

Забавное наблюдение, что для Янагихары еда — это новый секс:

In To Paradise, as in A Little Life, sex is often portrayed as an inconvenient compulsion; eros is reserved for food. At every possible juncture, Yanagihara describes the food on offer, including a mouthwatering array of cakes: peach cake, lemon cake, several different chocolate cakes, polenta cake (“its surface glazed with candied rounds of orange”), cake made with “pureed apples that had been whisked into the batter” or with “real strawberries swirled into the batter.” The characters seem to approach the world with a running catalogue of their friends’ favorite dishes and jams and varieties of cheese. When they have trouble making conversation, their go-to topics include “yeast-free baking.”

И заключительные слова рецензии, что лучше мы переживём эпидемии, чем будем мучить себя огромными дидактическими романами, — pure gold:

And if the antidote to dangerous ideas is didactic storytelling, I have to wonder (apparently with Yanagihara) whether the cure is worse than the disease.