A Little Life

Quite possibly one of the finest novels I've had the pleasure of reading. Epic, devastating, enduring, challenging, deeply moving. Such confident prose that unravels the innermost thoughts of these beautifully-drawn characters while also achieving an acute sense of sonder; and also written with admirable, aching restraint of deeply challenging and confronting topics; the effects of which I feel will be impressed upon me for a long time. I've come away thinking of the astonishing depths of depravity of humanity (and especially reading this in the context of the Epstein files which is desperately resonant) but more significantly of the enduring power of human companionship and kindness, with the nuance that you must extend kindness to yourself if you find that, after all, sometimes kindness isn't enough. Don't be intimidated by its length; if anything, I almost wished it was longer with how attached I became to the characters! The pacing, developments, and revelations unfold with care, confidence, and with seeds whose significance produce immense emotional power in time, and you will be rewarded for it. Highly recommend.

I first discovered Yanagihara through her divisive first novel The People in the Trees. I found the story it told to be a grim yet fascinating one and when I heard about A Little Life I immediately wanted to read it. I ordered a paperback (I'm not a lover of hardbacks) from the States and waited with barely contained anticipation for it to arrive. The book follows the life of four best friends all the way from college to their later adult lives. The first third of the book is equally split between the four as they struggle through the years after college and look to forge their way in life. JB is an artist with a number of personal issues, Willem a kindly aspiring actor, Malcolm an insecure architect and Jude, a brilliant yet damaged man, who could do many things yet decides on a life in law. Essentially Jude is the crux of this friendship as, owing to an utterly horrific youth, his friends rally round to protect him and support him through the disabilities and fragilities he acquired along the way. After a point the book begins to focus solely on the relationship between Willem and Jude and JB and Malcolm become, for the most part, peripheral characters. They are replaced by Harold and Julia, a man and wife who meet Jude while he is at college and grow extremely fond of him. Although this shift in direction disappointed me at first (I especially enjoyed reading about JB's life and his problems in the first section of the novel) I soon slipped into this new groove and quickly began to enjoy the new narrative possibilities this change created. As a result of these changes, the end of the book comes as no surprise to the reader but, nonetheless, I found it difficult to fight back the tears. A Little Life is similar in some regards, yet greatly different to, The People in the Trees. In A Little Life, Yanagihara again confronts many of the harsh and unpalatable traits of the human condition (child abuse, self-harming, graphic violence) that turned many readers away from her first novel. However, many of the characters she writes about here display an abundance of enviable human qualities - patience, love, loyalty - that were sorely lacking in the ones she created for The People in the Trees. This book evokes strong emotion - just like People in The Trees did - but this time those emotions are more favourable than the utter contempt and disgust I felt towards the protagonists of her first novel. I won't lie, the book almost had me on the verge of tears a number of times and I'm usually a hard and unfeeling person. From the reviews I've read, many people found the book forced and schmaltzy but I found it genuinely affecting - perhaps I am getting soft in my old age. Yanagihara writes so cleverly and touchingly of the men's friendship that it genuinely helped me create a brilliantly vivid image of the friends in my mind's eye; an image which stayed with me throughout the entirety of the book. I was also able to strongly connect with the feelings of many of the characters within its pages and perhaps this helped me appreciate and enjoy them more than other readers were able. Sure, the book is long and can at times be repetitious, and in it Yanagihara has a tendency to reuse words too closely together (over and over, cried and cried, struggled and struggled, argued and argued, etc) but for me, strangely, the very mundanity of the book is one of its most endearing traits. Real-life friendships are often valued on how comfortable companions feel around each other through the more tedious aspects of our co-existence and I think Yanagihara conveyed these uninspiring moments with such skill that they became enjoyable. I will admit that there is a level of over sentimentality present, especially concerning Jude, which I can understand will turn some people off. And, speaking of Jude, his unwavering self-loathing and total inability to even begin to accept his friends' feelings about him did grate occasionally but, overall, these elements rarely bothered me that much. Although the book was long I never found it a chore and I devoured huge chunks of it in single sittings, something I always associate with powerful books that resonate with me. Before I wrap up, a warning to potential buyers: there are, just as in The People in the Trees, some very shocking scenes within this book's pages. There are graphic depictions of sexual abuse (some involving children) and brutal violence. Yanagihara does not shy away from these unpalatable acts and actions and her no holds barred approach to these scenes may rear discomfort or indeed disgust in some readers. There are also a number of intense scenes involving bodily disfigurement and self-harm that people with a queasy disposition might find repulsive and, as such, should bear this in mind when considering a purchase. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone thinking about reading it - despite A Little Life clocking in at over 800 pages long I was sorry for it to end. Hanya Yanagihara is an accomplished and emotive writer and she is quick becoming one of my favourite authors; I am excited to see what she produces in the future. For me this has been one of the most memorable, moving and engrossing books I've read in a long time. I'm off to check out the actual Man Booker Prize winner now as, if it managed to best this novel, it must be some book.

There’s so many reviews of this novel, and it has been so widely critically acclaimed, that it is difficult to come up with anything new and a review almost seems pointless. I am no literature expert; I just say what I think without in depth analysis. Moreover, I tend to only write reviews when I have found a novel extremely good or very bad. If it was just “so-so” then I tend not to comment. For me, this was neither brilliant nor bad, but I do feel a need to comment. I have no doubt that this could have been one of the most magnificent stories that I had ever read; in parts it felt like that. There were periods of wonderfully rich writing, combined with moving story lines that I found engrossing. I can see why it is so critically acclaimed. Unfortunately, however, I found too many parts really hard going. There was a particular section, from about halfway through, that was extremely difficult reading, both in terms of the writing style, that became monotonous, and in terms of the narrative or action (or lack thereof). I get the deep and horrendous complexities being covered, but I very, very nearly discarded it; however, by that time, I was so far through I just felt that I must persevere. I was glad I did, because, although deeply upsetting the final few chapters were well worth the effort of getting through the tough parts. If I was to make a couple of specific criticisms, they would be that I found the shifting timeline hard to follow. I also did not like the technique of starting chapters by leaving the reader unaware of where we were in time and space and who the narrator was. This does not make writing great in my book; it is just annoying. I also wondered if someone could really self-harm to this extreme degree whilst still being able to hold down a hugely high-profile job, working ridiculous numbers of hours each day, sometimes barley sleeping, and perform apparently brilliantly in court. It stretched my imagination. I also marvelled at the proportion of gay people in the story. I know this sounds trite, but everyone’s brother seemed to have a boyfriend and everyone’s sister a girlfriend. This was an unfamiliar world. These are banal points, I realise that. But hey, we can all have our say. The last two things I want to say is that, in totality, this book is deeply depressing and upsetting. It happens that I read it at a time when my own mental health was not strong, occasioned by an ageing body and a life which began badly and was punctuated by mistakes and failures. Anyone in a similar position should avoid this novel. I cried a lot reading this. Secondly, I first bought a version of this book with the still image “Orgasmic Man” on the front cover. After a week of seeing this, I could stand it no longer and I had to turn to Amazon to buy this version as shown above. The images of what I take to be a representation of Lispenard Street are benign and evocative. Orgasmic Man is malignant and brutal, a bit like the story I suppose, and I get the paradox of orgasm and pain, but I still think such a cover was a very bad idea.

Every year I look at the Booker Prize shortlist and buy a couple of books from it, and frequently I read the winning book as well. A Little Life was on the shortlist in 2015 and has been sitting on my shelf for two years, until my break in August when I decided to actually read it, and it was well worth the wait. This is one of those books that will surely go down as a modern classic, it is so brilliant. The plot follows four friends who meet at college through life's up and downs and personal tragedies; JB an artists, Malcolm an architect, Willem an actor and Jude a lawyer. Jude is the glue to this group, and is the main focus of the narrative. There are a few chapters narrated in the first person by Willem and Harold, who is Jude's law professor, mentor and the nearest thing to a father her has. The writing of this book is sublime in its language and Hanya Yanagihara is able to write plot lines, that in some parts are harrowing, in a beautiful and lyrical way. I actually found her prose hypnotic, I was drawn into this book and couldn't tear my eyes away from the page. There are lots of difficult issues discussed in this book, rape, abuse, suicide, drug abuse, and many more but still I was entranced by this book. Hanaya Yanagihara shows a great understanding, intelligence and empathy towards these subjects. Her characterisation is again wonderful, with all her characters so true to life that at times I felt like I was reading a biography/autobiography rather than a piece of fiction. In a way A Little Life is a dark Fairytale with good, evil and romance at its centre. Jude is the main character in A Little Life, and all the other character's stories are all linked to his. In all my years of reading I don't think I have ever come across a character as damaged psychologically and physically as Jude. When we first meet him in the book we know he has physical problems and throughout the book his past is gradually revealed to the reader. Jude has experienced the best and worst of humanity through his life, and seen love in many guises from destructive love to the love of friendship that is all encompassing. Even though his story is hard to read in places, I found him a compelling character who I was really down to and wanted him to find happiness. Willem is the person whom he is closest to, a friendship that is unconditional and intense in places; it is Willem that is there for Jude at some of his lowest moments. Malcolm is different in that he comes from a wealthy family, very different from Jude who has no family and Willem whose parents are dead. His relationship with JB can be tense around the subject of race; Malcolm has a white mother and black father where as JB's parents are both black. JB is the typical troubled artist, very talented but also open to addiction. Through his story there is the time old discussion of what is art, figurative painting versus the modern art of the instillation, photography and performance art. I was really drawn into this as it something I studied with my degree and always find it a fascinating subject. To say A Little Life is a masterpiece, a Magnus opus, feels like an understatement. I have read the winner of the Booker Prize from 2015, A Brief History of Seven Killings, and have to say I think A Little Life is so much better. There are very few novels, except from the classics, that I keep to read again but this book will be added to that shelf to join other books that I found through the Booker Prize; Possession by A.S Byatt, Amsterdam by Ian MacEwan and The Goldfinch and The Secret History by Donna Tartt being on that shelf. This is a mesmerising, intelligent, all encompassing read and one that will stay with me forever. This is a monumental novel in my opinion and one I will always recommend as well as those mentioned above. A Little Life is fiction at its absolute best; the perfect novel.

This book is the most beautiful and the most ugly and upsetting I have ever read. It is emotional, harrowingly so. I have seen it described as trauma porn, and I can understand that, but disagree. For me the theme of the book is a celebration of love and friendship through everything that life can throw, and it throws a hell of a lot as it happens. I lost my wife last year and reading the last part was almost unbearable. I am pleased I persisted though. If there is anything out there with a similar intensity of emotion then I have not read it. It is an experience., but it is not an easy read.

I couldn’t put this book down. It robbed me of hours of sleep, it distracted me during the day - so strong was its emotional impact on me. The story spans the lifetime of four friends who meet at college for the first time and end up rich and famous in New York. I appreciated that the author tied all loose ends and delivered the complete life story of the friendship between her characters, over decades, through all the highs and lows of their life. She explored every character in depth and they possess complex and convincing personalities. These four young men originally come from very different backgrounds whether cultural, racial, social, financial and emotional – and one of them, Jude, come from the unknown and, as the story unfolds, one discovers his horrific past of child abuse. I like how the bond between all friends (the original four accumulate a few more dear friends) transcends all barriers, removing race and sexual preference as a marker of difference. The central theme for me was friendship: how vital it is in our lives, how it can make us bear the worst pain, overcome our deepest fears, push aside our pasts, survive our traumas and carry us through years and years of life and even make us achieve what we never thought we could. Hanya Yanagihara demonstrates a deep understanding of self-hatred and self-destruction and writes convincingly with great empathy abuse in childhood and doesn’t believe one can ever overcome the damage. Jude bears his scars and his nightmares throughout his life. Only work provides him with the escapism that makes survival possible. There are a lot of other themes in this book: how rallying together to help Jude creates a strong bond between all his friends, how caring for someone gives purpose to life, how someone who has been unloved and destroyed in childhood can still find so much love in life, how work occupied most of her characters’ lives but played only a minor part in what was truly important for them in life, how love can be fulfilling without sex, how love can be so strong that life has no meaning without it, how hard some of us find to live through everyday, how child abuse is so widespread in the institutions we believe to be there to protect children. Finally, it is the author’s talent at story telling, the clarity of her prose and her analysis of emotional turmoil that glued me to her book and, in the end, left me more than satisfied. I had a heart breaking but highly rewarding insight in the little life of her characters. THE ISLAND GIRL

A Little life The subject is a group of four young men who first met at college, and who remained friends through their lives. As the story develops we learn that one of them was grossly abused during his childhood and the damage this has inflicted on him is massive both physically and emotionally. No amount of worldly success, therapeutic intervention and love and affection in his adult life is enough to relieve his sufferings. This part of the plot was the most convincing and vividly and movingly told. The four main protagonists, who meet when they are still in their teens come from very different backgrounds and pursue very different careers. However, they have in common that they are all high achievers, and become rich and famous. I found the story riveting, moving and ultimately tragic, and over the several days during which I read it I was very preoccupied with it. When I finished it I felt bereft, as if I had lost a group of friends and a world I had grown used to. So why have I only given it three stars? Because in spite of its ability to absorb me, for me it has many flaws, as a novel. I was aware of this from the start, but I hoped the importance of the flaws would diminish as I read on but on the contrary they proliferated. Firstly I found the plot implausible in many ways. These four men became very close friends in college, not unusual, but what is unusual is that they remained extremely close for the rest of their lives. Given that each of their chosen professions has its own distinctive culture, it is surprising that none of the four developed close relationships within their own milieu or elsewhere and neither did their links with the other three in their former student group weaken or diminish or change over time as their circumstances grew more and more different. The fact that they were all so successful in their wildly different professional lives seemed somewhat improbable too. The most improbable of all was the one who achieved early acclaim as an artist when he painted images of the other three when they were in college, but then seemed to spend his life repeating this, and acquiring something of a cult status as an artist for doing so. Very hard to credit, in the art world of the 21st century that someone would become so successful for repeatedly painting pictures of his old college pals. Each of the other three was similarly successful, one as a lawyer, one as an architect, and one as an actor who became recognised all over the world. And as they were so successful, after an initial period of relative poverty they soon all became very rich- they had at least two houses each, one in the posh bits of New York City and one in the country. The lawyer has a huge loft apartment with its own personal swimming pool, plus an award winning house in the country (designed by his college mate architect of course) with 17 acres and a lake and another swimming pool, this time lined with Italian grey slate. And it is mentioned in passing that later on he bought himself an apartment in London, in Marylebone, which he thought of as a quiet and unpretentious district. He bought it to save himself and his partner from the inconvenience of having to stay in a hotel when they were in London. So as sad as the circumstances of their history are, the protagonists were not much troubled by the usual mundane struggles that beset most of the world’s citizens and one can’t help but think at times that although they suffered they did so in some comfort and luxury. Ordinary people, who do humble practical jobs, are mentioned, but they are described only by their functions and names like Mrs Zhou the housekeeper, Mr Ahmed the chauffeur and some unnamed gardeners at the country house who keep the place spic and span and we are told, pick blossoms to put in vases in the house weekly, whether or not anyone is staying there. Nurses called Patrizia and Yasmin, come and go. But we never hear anything about any of them except that they do what the main character wants and then go away again. It could be argued that they were not important to the story, but it does have the effect of placing the action into a rarified and pampered world which is unfamiliar to most of us. A major problem for me is that there are no women characters who are anything more than appendages to the men. There is one woman, Julia, whose role is actually quite crucial to the plot, but I did not feel I knew her in the way that I knew her husband Harold, for example. If I had not known that the writer was a woman I would never have guessed it. Her previous novel, The People in the Trees, was similarly rather weak on female characters. I have no objection to reading a book about a group of men, it is just that I think it is implausible that four men could go from the age of eighteen or so for the rest of their lives without women being involved in their lives in any significant way that impinged upon the unfolding of the story. My final criticism is that it is just too long. There is a lot of repetition, and many trivial events are described in too much detail for example the preparation of meals and other activities of daily living. Not just once but over and over again. The suffering of the main protagonist is indeed tragic, but in the end the detailed repeat descriptions detract from the emotional effect rather than add to it. Less would have been more. Anyone reading to the end of this (also probably too long) review should not be put off reading the book in spite of my perceptions of its flaws. The author knows how to write to draw her readers in and to take them for a very unusual journey and memorable journey. I will remember this novel long after I have forgotten many more technically perfect ones. I shall buy her next novel as soon as it appears and look forward to reading it.

The best, most harrowing book I've ever read. It's amazing, even though I sobbed for the last third of the book. So beautifully written. I struggled with the first couple of chapters, but please don't give up.

I’ll be blunt upfront. A LITTLE LIFE (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara is the most soul-wrenching novel I have perhaps ever read. In the novel Yanagihara follows in minute detail the lives of four men who become friends, “a clique,” in college and continue to be close into their late fifties. JB Marion begins his work life as a “receptionist at a small but influential magazine based in SoHo that covered the downtown art scene,” with ambitions to become an artist. Fatherless since he was three, JB is of Haitian descent, tends toward being overweight, and is gay. Willem Ragnarsson, handsome and “liked by everyone” starts out as a waiter, but has his eye set on becoming a professional actor on stage and screen. In ways, Malcolm Irvine is the outlier of the group, still living at home with his parents who are a couple of mixed-race. He is wealthy and determined to become an architect. Malcolm appears to be oblivious of his appeal to others, even naïve, somewhat confused about his sexuality, and unmindful of his financial situation although generous to his friends and others when they are in need. At the core of the four friends is Jude St. Francis who holds the group together—not so much by what he does even though he is considerably bright, loyal, and hard-working, as well as determined to become a prosecutor, but because his friends care about him and Jude has needs. Parentless and with a mysterious past all of which he never speaks about and never having “a girlfriend or a boyfriend,” Jude has trouble with his legs and is frequently in pain. Although he never complains nor asks for help, his friends are very aware of his situation and go out of their way to assist Jude in as tactful of a manner as possible. Mainly set in New York City, as A LITTLE LIFE unfolds, Yanagihara brings into the fold other characters of importance including a doctor, Andy Contractor, and a former law professor, Harold Stein and his wife Judy, all of whom play important roles in in the novel, as well as a host of minor characters. It is, however, the four friends who remain central to the story, especially Jude and Willem, roommates in college and who remain the closest of the friends. The bulk of Yanagihara’s novel is told in chronicle order, but as the novel progresses, there are more flashbacks and memories, some of which get repeated with added detail as they surface, most of them revolving around Jude who becomes more and more the novel’s central character. When thinking about tragic characters in prose fiction, no one comes my mind as being more tragic than Jude Fawley from Thomas Hardy’s JUDE THE OBSCURE (1894/1895) which may be the motivation for the author’s name for her main character—Jude, “the patron saint of lost causes.” Although readers soon come to the realization Jude is a physically and emotionally scarred individual, Yanagihara’s revelations about the details of Jude’s history are painfully slow in coming—mirroring the complexity and rawness of those very memories which haunt and torment Jude. They are memories which have shaped, or rather distorted, his life. In one flashback the author reveals twenty-five years in the past, Ana, Jude's now deceased “first and only social worker” warning Jude during a hospital stay, “…you have to talk about these things while they’re fresh. Or you’ll never talk about them… and it’s going to fester inside you, and you’re always going to think you’re to blame. You’ll be wrong, of course, but you’ll always think it.” There are relatively few highs in Jude’s life and when they occur, the reader is bound to find them tearful moments of joy. The increasingly close friendship between Jude and Willem with both of them at the zenith of their careers is complex—filled paradoxically with the bounty which human relationships can contain along with enormous peril. Unfortunately, most of Jude’s life is a series of unrelenting, dreadful, terrifying, shattering lows and betrayals accompanied by self-destructive impulses which become worse and worse, adding to a man’s already burdensome childhood, youth, and life-long post-traumatic stress. Jude’s is a portrait of suffering beyond comprehension and the brutal perpetrators of his torments throughout his life are the epitome of unfathomable, monstrous human behavior. Thus, A LITTLE LIFE does not make for easy reading. It is emotionally jolting and at the same time riveting. So vivid are Yanagihara’s expose of the quartet of characters, the reader becomes one with them, making it a quintet. The author’s characters are real to life, the dialogue is vivid and genuine, and the quality of the writing as well as the tone of the novel is unswerving. Although Yanagihara’s central characters meet with sometimes staggering personal and professional successes, there are also failures and tragedies, both past and present, and always a dire cloud which encircles them all, especially Jude. Due to her immense and encompassing narrative skills, readers will eventually brace themselves so that whenever a horrifying revelation is made about Jude’s secret past or his present, there is likely worse to come. A narrative trick Yanagihara pulls a little over a quarter of the way into the novel and again at the half-way point, moving from an omniscient narrator to what clearly is a first person although not readily identifiable narrator, is bound to strike the reader as both curious and possibly even portentous. It is left up to the reader to recognize and interpret for themselves the meaning of the author’s temporary changes in point of view. She does the same switch near the book’s conclusion which eventually brings the work to its shocking climax and even more emotionally numbing, traumatic end. Clearly, A LITTLE LIFE is not for everyone. even though the novel is a modern masterpiece of writing and prose fiction and a work which will haunt the reader for a long time. The most resilient reader may very likely find there are times when they simply must close the book and exit the bleakness of the world Yanagihara creates before picking the book up again. Others may discover there are times when they simply want to throw the book across the room. Some readers may find the book impossible to finish because it is so emotionally draining. Regardless of the reader’s reaction to the novel, A LITTLE LIFE is an incredible accomplishment and a work which haunt the reader for a long time. [NOTES: (1) A LITTLE LIFE has recently been declared one of “The 20 Best Novels of the Decade” by Emily Temple for The Literary Hub on December 23, 2019. (2) The book’s cover photo is from a series of photos taken in the 1960s by Peter Hujar. The photo is titled “Orgasmic Man.” The photo is purposefully ambiguous. Is the man depicted experiencing joy or pain? (3) A stage adaptation of A LITTLE LIFE ran in Amsterdam in 2018 and 2019 with limited runs, only, most of which were in Dutch.]

First things first, I think this is the best written book I've ever read (maybe that doesn't say a lot because I mostly read YA romances or thrillers - but still, the writting on this book is amazing and anyone can attest to that). Second, oh where to begin... I can see why people either hate or love this book. In life, you encounter people with different approaches to life - some may choose to look at the positive side of things, others get a little stuck on the negatives - with this book is no different. Yes, there's a sequence of tragedies and inimaginable horrors and you can get stuck on that, but, like myself, you can extract SO MANY great things from this book, I chose to look at it as story about love (and not necessarily romantic love). The author managed to put into words thoughts that I had throughout my life about relationship, friendship, adulthood, parenthood, death and, as a lawyer, even the law. All the characters are well built, even if you don't go too deep in their past, there's background enough to understand why they are the way they are, why they struggle with what they struggle. I went in prepared to cry, but by the last page I was sobbing so hard I felt like I was going to throw up. Since then I carry the characters close to my heart and think about them every single day. I'm grateful for the opportunity to know their story. Jude, you will stick with me forever.

Daha okumadım Umuyorum ki güzel bir kitaptır☺️✌🏻

Perfect condition🥰🥰🥰

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