A Little Life: A Novel

You know when someone talks to you about a “sad book,” and you immediately think, “well, someone precious is going to die at the end?” A Little Life has been called tragic, depressing, a masterpiece that you cannot get through without a wad of tissues nearby, and so naturally, I assumed someone would die at the end. I went into this book prepared to not get too attached to the characters, but it’s inevitable to not connect with people who are the subjects of an 800-page book with minimal spacing and tiny font. I’d like to think I went into this book prepared, but my preparation got me nowhere.This novel does not lead up to a sad ending. Let me explain. Calling this novel “sad” is a massive understatement. It is 800 pages of tragedy after tragedy, because the “sad” doesn’t follow the pattern we are used to. It’s not happy and pleasant until the end where something sad happens- no, this book is a depressing hunk of paper with very little happiness in it. A Little Life is a long, winding tunnel spotted with skylights. You walk forward in the darkness with a couple of friends, and you are struck with sadness after sadness. Your friends get lost in the tunnel, you fall and break your arm, and then the tunnel gives you a foot of light where you can look around and take a breather before plunging yourself into the darkness. You don’t know what’s at the end, because the tunnel gives you no hints. You don’t know if you’ll exit into the open. You don’t know if you’ll hit a dead-end, but you keep on walking because by this point, your masochism has kicked in and you’re addicted to the torture.We follow the stories of four characters, all college-friends who have moved from Boston to New York City in order to fulfill their dreams. Malcolm is an aspiring architect- timid and shy, whose overbearing parents are his pride and shame. JB is a painter- arrogant, optimistic and full of life, JB is the only one among his friends who is certain he will make it in life. Willem is an actor, calm and steady who has no family but his three best friends. But while the three have their own lives, their bond is strengthened by the presence of one Jude St. Francis. Jude is enigmatic. Despite having been friends for years, nobody knows anything about him; not his ethnicity or his sexuality. They don’t know anything about his childhood or his years before attending university. Jude has an injury; an accident severely limited the use of his legs, but nobody even knows how this came to be. But Jude is quiet, and he is kind and generous and dependent. And so the three friends lend their shoulders silently for him to lean on. This book is not set in one time period: years and decades pass, and each character matures, develops and experiences success and the perils of life, sometimes together, other times apart. As the narrative progresses, one thing becomes crystal clear: Jude has gone through an unspeakable childhood trauma. He is fragile and broken, battling so hard with inner demons that never seem to leave him.If you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-packed, plot-centered novel, put this book down and walk far, far away. A Little Life reads more like an in-depth character study than anything else. Despite there being a large, diverse, well-fleshed out cast of characters- make no mistake: this novel is about Jude. This novel is about Jude’s life, his depression, his experiences, his feelings of pain and insurmountable shame. It is a story about Jude’s relationships and his impact on the people around him. It is a story about love and loss, of betrayal and friendship, of perseverance and giving in. And because it follows the story of such a broken, intense young man, it is a difficult read.It is a difficult read in more ways than one. Firstly, it is 800 pages long with very little action, with large chunks of paragraphs detailing the little moments in life, detailing theorems and laws and art and literature. Large chunks that talk about family, sex, career and the meaning of love- things that may not even need to be in the book. These large chunks familiarize you with our characters’ backgrounds, their introspections and streams of consciousness, their experiences with each other and outside of their immediate relationships. The characters in this novel feel real; more than once, I felt like I could reach out and touch them. They feel like friends, comrades you’ve known for a long, long time. Their happiness genuinely excites you, and their sadness genuinely devastates you. You also become so invested in their relationships with each other, almost as if you’re a mediator.Apart from the thematic material, what makes this novel so hard to digest is the characters. I’m not exaggerating when I say that they feel like friends- watching them suffer through unimaginable things hurt me. I have never felt this way before. Halfway through the book, I had already cried at least twice, excluding the point where I sobbed for ten pages straight. And then again after. Yanagihara’s empathetic portrayal of human nature, of human decency and monstrosity is so spot-on. I don’t know what else I can say.Secondly, it is brutal in its honest, unflinching portrayal of mental illness. There were several moments in this novel where I had to set the book aside and steady my breathing. It is uncomfortable. It depicts self-harm and depression graphically but not gratuitously, with sensitivity without doing it for “the shock factor.” Finally, the constant jumps in time frame makes this book far from a casual read. You need to keep up. Each ‘section’ takes place a few years after the previous one, but sometimes Yanagihara alternates time within paragraphs as well. One time you’re seeing the friends’ lives when they are 35, and you jump back in the middle of a paragraph to when they are 28. It can be quite jarring if you’re not paying attention.But having said that, Yanagihara’s writing is easy to keep up with. Daunting as it may be with its intelligent discussion of many themes (some of which I mentioned above) and the sheer scale of the book, her writing is welcoming. Complex, full of emotion and genuine feeling, full of ‘quotable’ things without it ever being overbearing or ‘too much.’ Authors writing in the literary fiction genre so often give off the impression that they need to prove something, but Yanagihara writes with effortless grace and poise. She’s not trying to prove anything; this is her in 800 pages- take it or leave it.But despite all my praises, this is not a perfect book. My main complaint is the length. Bear with me. I have no problems with lengthy books, as long as the length is justified. Many will probably disagree with me, but I felt that the novel could have been cut short by at least 50 or 100 pages. For example, towards the beginning, we get such an in-depth look into JB and Malcolm’s characters, much of which doesn’t come back after the first section. Perhaps their backgrounds could have been weaved more seamlessly into the narrative as the book went along. A lot of the objective discussions about science and mathematics were beautifully written, sure, but didn’t feel like they needed to be there. But I’ve got to give Yanagihara this: despite the length, and despite the discussions on objective topics, I was hanging on to her every word. I didn’t skim a single page- I was just that invested.So, here we are. You and me at the mouth of the tunnel. I made it out, and you’re asking me if you should take the chance. “It’s difficult. It’s long. It’s even terrifying at times, but-” and I prod you into the darkness, “it’s also exhilarating and beautiful and one hell of an experience.”

I finished Hanya Yanagihara's emotionally draining, 'A Little Life', over three months ago and in the time since, I felt I needed to recover from her roller coaster of a novel. Imagine though a roller coaster that is on fire, but has classical music playing on its back row as it dips and ascends into screaming terror and melancholic euphoria.Upon completing this novel, I was fatigued, drained, and spent of my emotions because I have never equally hated and admired a book so much in my literary life. On two occasions while reading, I took a shot of tequila to get through particular sections. Sections where when the tequila did not help, I put the book down because the book's content read like being hit by a Mack truck at full speed. Nothing in this novel is subtle, as a matter of fact, I equate reading it to a jackhammer puncturing hard-baked cement and you the reader is the cement. The storytelling is piercing, with plangent themes that gutted my insides, and it is so visceral that it ostensibly paints Yanagihara to be a sadistic fiend for unleashing a literary work such as this. She's of course not, she's simply a good writer who knows how to bring a heartbreaking story to life.Yes, 'A Little Life' is an agonizing read, but one that was masterfully written, offering all manner of literary rewards. Employing use of a dense, particularized writing style, Yanagihara's prose is architectural, cerebral, and drawn out at a pace that is like molasses rolling up a sand dusted hill. From page one, I found the four protagonists to be engaging, but forebodingly so, where I immediately knew that there will be a lot to unpack in the subsequent pages ahead. Though the novel's setting is contemporary, Yanagihara tells it in an odd but effective flashback mixed with present day style where the context of time is always abstract. Specific dates or years are never used, instead we get descriptors such as "nine years ago," "on his fifth birthday," "four years after..." This approach bothered me initially, because it made some of the flashback scenes less textural. But Yanagihara is such a good writer, she made the technique work, as it became tolerable as I read on. Again, nothing in this novel is subtle or plain, but despite the elaborately detailed descriptions, which I admired, the novel is readable. Although, I think some readers may find it to be plodding.For me, I think one of Yanagihara's strength as a writer is her ability to flesh out characters as if they were filigree, branching them out far and wide, but characters that have a centered, yet deeply flawed souls. As well written as each of the characterizations are here, I admit that I dislike every one of them. The four protagonists - Jude, Willem, Jean-Baptist, and Malcolm, plus two major secondary ones, Andy, and Harold - all made my emotions seesaw from vexation to sympathy, but mostly vexation. Jude, the center of the novel's story, is especially maddening. He is a self imposed martyr, at times grating, and is in constant need of attention, attention that is wanted or not. Yet, I couldn't help but be heartbroken for him due to his disquieting childhood and unenviable lot in life.Another source of frustration was that 'A Little Life' has in my opinion, an uncomfortable air of incestuous camaraderie between the six protagonists, a bothersome co-dependency that drove me up the wall. Everyone in Jude's life - Willem, Jean-Baptist, Malcolm, Andy, and Harold, individually and collectively coddle him to such an extant that it borders on criminal. I was bothered that each of these characters allowed their hubris and selfishness to take precedence over the necessary tough love that Jude needed. The enabling and coddling became reductive, and peeved me so badly that I yelled out at my book several times. Still, despite my irritation at the imbecilic actions of the characters, I couldn't help but regress into pity and gut-wrenching grief for each of their lives. Eventually, my dislike of the characters became irrelevant, as I don't think characters have to be likable in order to be effective. At any given time, I was mad at each of them, but in their frustrating behavior, they made me think long and hard about human frailty.Despite my frustrations, and even at 720 densely packed pages, 'A Little Life' is a worthy read. Make no mistake, as it did me, this is a novel that will peel your insides and likely wreck you. There were moments where I could only read certain chapters in short spurts, with breaks between paragraphs because the content is so unsettling. Nevertheless, I read it all, because even though this is a fictional story, I can't help but think that it is the life that some unfortunate souls have lived, and or are living right now.I highly recommend 'A Little Life', but again be warned, the content is visceral, EXCRUCIATING, and unrelenting. The depravity and evil that Yanagihara has showcased in these pages is unreal, and is unlike any I've ever read. As you progress though the novel, prepare yourself before reading pages 323-340, 392-403, 417-423. The entire book is not easy to get through, but these pages are especially ungodly. I don't care who you are or how strong you are, I think this book is one that will wreck most. I give it 4.75 stars out of 5 for the writing, the themes, and the fleshed out characterizations, even though the novel as a whole is positively diabolical.

Not sure why I am bothering to offer my take on this book, when the way Amazon now organise reviews conspires to hide low stars, but here goes. Little Life is an overwrought tale, heavy on sexual sadism, concerning the gilded lives of priveleged, beautiful people. The narrative rocks between the good heartedness of its characters in the present and revelations of torture against its main protagonist in the past. Skip every chapter concerning Jude, and a much better, and slimmer, novel emerges.

The fundamental problem with A Little Life is that it doesn't deliver what it claims to be. It is marketed as a novel about four friends, but it isn't that at all. It is a novel about ONE person (Jude), and the other three (I include Willem here) are so wooden and poorly sketched, they aren't believable in the slightest. The bizarre thing is that in a novel of this length (700+ pages), the author doesn't manage to develop Willem, Malcolm and JB whatsoever, apart from a turgid section inserted at the beginning of the book which exists purely to sketch out the main characters. If this were a 200-300 page novel I would still consider these poorly developed characters, but in a book of this length how can this be possible?So what DOES the author spend all these pages doing? You might assume 'a Little Life must be plot driven then', but again, no. There is very little plot. The author constantly teases details of Jude's early life - he was horrifically abused and injured as a child (at the hands of a catholic monk, natch), but really the book isn't about this, it's about how Jude tries (and mostly fails) to deal with this trauma in his adult life (mostly through copious amounts of self harm), and the impact it has on those around him. The main bit of suspense a Little Life swings on is that Jude conveniently never explains to people what actually happened to him - you think he's about to but no, he doesn't, and the book reverts to another hundred pages of tedious dinners and thanksgivings and memories that go precisely nowhere.I'd say you could slim this book down, but I think by bringing together all the actual stuff that happens, you would see just how unlikely and unoriginal plot is - the over-ornate misfortunates experienced by Jude, the improbability of the four main characters' ability to be the centre of attention wherever they go and the top of all their respective fields, and actually how mundane the plot is when you distil it down: traumatic childhood > gilded success but ennui in adulthood > eventually finding love > happiness destroyed in a convenient accident > sadness, acceptance and death.The trick at the heart of this book is that its length creates the illusion that the plot has any depth or nuance, it tricks you into thinking that the characters are well developed just because you spent a load of time reading about them. It tricks you into thinking it's clever just because everyone in it is an acclaimed artist, or an A-list movie star, or an era-defining architect, or a Harvard professor, or (in Jude's case) a brilliant mathematician and lawyer and philanthropist and art collector all in one. But it's not, it's just indulgent YA literature.Once you notice the way that additional, superfluous length is being added in, this is a really frustrating read: events will be described, someone present will be reminded of an event that happened several months prior and pointless paragraphs of totally irrelevant information stretch on and on describing this until suddenly the story reverts back to what is actually happening and the narrative continues, except it feels totally disjointed. Yes, this can be used in writing to great effect, but a Little Life doesn't do that. It just feels like pure padding.One reason I think this book has been so acclaimed, is that the author uses a Little Life to talk about the hot topic of 'identity' (potentially a good intention), but does so in such a shallow, tokenistic and unrealistic way that it borders on offensive. The author labours so much over emphasising that the grey cast of tediously metropolitan background characters are all on different ends of the LGBT spectrum, all incredibly racially diverse, but in such a way that they are all inherently unbelievable. Just their names (Citizen van Straaten, Rhodes Arrowsmith, Phaedra de los Santos, Andy Contractor) is enough to make you cringe at how unlikely it all is. There are no characters in this who feel fundamentally real - it's like they've all been conjured from a faux New York Magazine reading alternate globalist universe (where everyone is rich, by the way, but only through cool and interesting creative careers of course, nothing boring and conventional).Finally, what made me truly dislike this book is the fact that while almost all its main characters are male, the author seems completely unable to create convincing male characters, write male dialogue and describe male relationships. If you just count the number of lines of dialogue that begin with indulgent 'Oh's and sighs and gasps you'll know what I mean. The author wanted to create a novel about glamorous, diverse people, but it feels like 'The people a teenager from Ohio imagined they would befriend if they went to art school in New York'.I was recommended this by someone I really respect so I saw it through just to see if it got better. I would recommend others not to bother.

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.

Yanagihara writes beautifully but doesn't know when to stop.Seven hundred pages about rich New York men and their friendship.Centered round a ruthless lawyer who was brutally abused by a number of men when he was a child.Out of shame he periodically cuts himself.His friends adore him,though it's hard to understand what he gives them.Women are hardly mentioned.

I really can see so little point to this novel, - in fact I believe it may do more harm than good - it makes me more and more angry the more I think about it. There is no equivocation that horrifying abuse happens, often, everywhere and I believe in both exposing that and developing a collective understanding of its causes and impacts. But this novel doesn’t achieve anything so basic or sophisticated. The drawing of the main character, to whom all this happens, as well as his friends’ lives and responses to him, is so ridiculously simplistic and idealistic - without being in the least bit inspirational - that it reduces the graphic descriptions of trauma, uncomfortably acceptable if appropriately managed, to nothing more than parasitic voyeurism.