A Little Life
A Novel
-
-
4.5 • 267 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE
A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A Little Life will stun you and break your heart. After graduating from an elite university, four young men navigate the ambitions and distractions of life in New York City. Hanya Yanagihara slowly fills out the outlines of her characters: Malcolm, JB, Willem and Jude; and the effect is like watching a gifted painter toil over a complicated canvas. As this dense novel zeroes in on Jude and his horrific upbringing, we experience an overwhelming desire to step into the story and comfort the brilliant, quietly suffering lawyer, to counteract the unfathomable cruelties he’s endured. That’s how lifelike this novel is, and how exceptionally powerful.
Customer Reviews
A Little Life
While I enjoyed the writer's style, many times I had to put this book down because it was so upsetting.Still bothers me the next day!
life changing
my life has been forever changed. not a day passes where I don’t think about Jude and this book
to what end?
I stopped reading after half-way through this painful story. I could see the pattern and just didn’t want to keep toiling through the same old same.
I especially did not enjoy that the lead actor just kept getting up and getting back to things as if by some super-human ability, and the other characters just formed themselves around that, dragging the melodrama on and on…
I thought many of the characters and particularly the storyline were implausible, not true to life. It read like the author was just pulling stuff out of their head, not from any personal experience or research, expecting us to just go along with things that to me just were not credible.