![]() While it starts as a book of 4 boys navigating adulthood in NYC, it becomes a story of Jude, and the people who fight against losing him to his personal demons. The novel changes perspective on numerous occasions, but it always comes back to Jude, adding to readers’ knowledge of him and how people act around him. Jude is the most mysterious, and it is on him that Yanagihara focuses her story. There’s Jean-Baptiste, the gifted artist filled with characteristic Haitian pride Malcolm, the wealthy mixed-race aspiring artist who seems to consistently fall short of his father’s expectations Willem, the son of poor Swedish migrants with a promising acting career and Jude, the wildly intelligent orphan riddled by a shocking assortment of physical and emotional scarring. Is it the next great gay novel? Is it a coming-of-age novel on steroids? Is it a subversive look about the difficulties of post-traumatic healing? Trudging its way to bestseller status despite being over 700 pages and a definitive mood killer, A Little Life has become many different things to many different types of people. It’s well deserved, because this book succeeds at making readers feel the plight of its characters with incredible depth. Short-listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize (It was beat out by my next book club choice, A Brief History of Seven Killings) and long-listed for many more, it’s continuing to gather acclaim. ![]() One status update read, “I’m literally making the face on the cover of this book,” and I meant it.Ī Little Life has been doing amazingly this award season. ![]() They were very authentic reactions to what was happening in the novel. Those following my tweets or Goodreads over the last week or so are very well aware that I’ve read A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. Read it for its artistry, even though it pushes the boundaries into excessively sad. Short Review: A Little Life is an emotionally devastating character study of unprecedented depth.
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