A Little Life
A Novel
Book - 2015
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Brace yourself for the most astonishing, challenging, upsetting, and profoundly moving book in many a season. An epic about love and friendship in the twenty-first century that goes into some of the darkest places fiction has ever traveled and yet somehow improbably breaks through into the light. Truly an amazement--and a great gift for its readers.
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring act∨ JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome--but that will define his life forever.
In rich and resplendent prose, Yanagihara has fashioned a tragic and transcendent hymn to brotherly love, a masterful depiction of heartbreak, and a dark examination of the tyranny of memory and the limits of human endurance.
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Add a Quote"But what Andy never understood about him was this: he was an optimist. Every month, every week he chose to open his eyes, to live another day in the world. He did it when he was feeling so awful that sometimes the pain seemed to transport him to another state, one in which everything, even the past that he worked so hard to forget, seemed to fade into a gray watercolor wash. He did it when his memories crowded out all other thoughts, when it took real effort, real concentration, to tether himself to his current life, to keep himself from raging with despair and shame. He did it when he was so exhausted of trying, when being awake and alive demanded such energy that he had to lie in bed thinking of reasons to get up and try again, when it would be easier to go to the bathroom and untape the plastic zipped bag containing his cotton pads and loose razors and alcohol wipes and bandages from its hiding place beneath the sink and simply surrender. Those were the very bad days."
"Wasn't it a miracle to survive the unsurvivable? Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn't this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle? And so who could blame him for hoping for one more, for hoping that despite knowing better, that despite biology, and time, and history, that they would be the exception, that what happened to other people with Jude's sort of injury would't happen to him, that even with all that Jude had overcome, he might overcome just one more thing?"
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Add a Commentrecommended by Michelle 7-19-18
I finished A Little Life about a week ago, and have been unable to put my thoughts into words. I'm still not sure what I want to say about it, exactly. It is the most devastating, heart breaking, upsetting and disturbing novel I have ever read. I was so distraught when I finished the book that I cried myself to sleep ... I cried so much that my eyes were still swollen a full 48 hours afterwards. I have read others refer to the book as 'Tragedy Porn', and I'm not sure I can disagree. It feels like the author set out to write THE MOST DEPRESSING BOOK OF ALL TIME ... and she succeeded.
And yet... you fall in love with these characters (most especially Jude and Willem), and there are certainly parts of this novel that are so well written you can feel them imprinted on your soul. It is difficult to say much without giving away any spoilers, but suffice it to say, reader beware, the book is full of graphic physical and sexual abuse.
I can't say I liked this book. It is much too upsetting to 'like'. But like with any art, I know it is good because of how intensely it moved me, and by how much I came to care about the characters.
"A Little Life" is an New York ensemble novel. Four men find their way in New York City, and though the story begins with all four, the focus narrows onto Jude, whose past and present Yanagihara describes, drip by drip, in achingly beautiful and scarring detail.
It's a complicated love, but I love this book. It's tragic, traumatic, melodramatic—and long, funny, serious, heartbreaking, artful, intense, joyful, depressing, stressful, despairing, exhausting. Reading this book is an emotional experience: its affective structuring is more apparent than most novels. For some readers, the novel gives too much, asks for too much, but I keep returning to it.
More than a two years after reading this book, I'm still haunted by the beautiful and tragic friendship between its primary protagonists. At more than 800 pages, it's a considerable investment of time (particularly given some of the disturbing elements of one of the character's life). Yanagihara manages the incredible feat of developing a set of characters over an entire lifetime, seamlessly jumping between the past, present, and future, all while rendering a world that is eerily timeless. Yanagihara omits concrete dates or significant current events that would give context to the world she has created. It's disconcerting, paradoxical and a major reason this book is so memorable.
This is a huge read (800 pages) and its subject matter can be confronting, but it is well worth taking the time to get to know these very memorable characters.
Oh man, this is a long book, but I never felt like I was slogging through its hundreds of pages. Instead, I kept turning the pages to get more glimpses of the lives of Jude and Willem (and Malcolm and JB, but to a lesser extent). This book was heartbreaking and, at times, incredibly difficult to read, but in spite of that, the highs were very high. I definitely cried through several scenes, usually because my heart was breaking, but a couple of times it was from happiness. This book . . . oh this book- it was truly an emotional roller coaster for me.
This was shortlisted for the Mann Booker prize in 2015 and I picked it up on a recommendation of a college student who considers it a life changing book in his life making me predisposed to like it. The woman can certainly write about a range of things and there are passages that are simply sublime. Ostensibly about the life long friendship of 4 male college roommates sort of a male version of "the Group" by Mary McCarthy. The friends are Jude, Willem, JB and Malcolm but the book is ultimately about Jude irreparably damaged as a child who can't be saved despite a plethora of people in his adult life who provide unconditional love. I found it implausible, melodramatic and could not grasp why Jude got unconditional love and life long support from a group of people, i.e. not sure what Jude brought to the table.
I don't think I've ever cried so much at a book in my life? Extremely brutal and heartbreaking but worth it, IMO.
I found this book difficult to put down. It shows the power of friendship and love but at times is heartbreaking.
Gripping but too long; interesting technique with gradual incorporation of the past. Halfway through it felt like it was made for a tv series. A mix of realistic and fictional character behaviour.