A Little Life

By Hanya Yanagihara

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804172706
• ISBN13: 9780804172707
• Release Date: January 2016
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 832 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Painful and Exhausting

The man’s picture on the cover of this book captures the experience of reading A Little Life. Yes, it is a painful and exhausting journey, but it is a wonderful, well presented book. The characters are brought to life and the reader accompanies them as they navigate their lives as given to them with all its confusing joy, love, sadness and pain. It is not for the feint of heart or mind but definitely worth the read.

Excellent

This book was so good and yet so hard to read at times. I cried. You fall in love with the main character Jude.

This book was heartbreaking

I cried so many times while reading this book. Definitely one of the best books I've ever read.

Boy oh boy

If you are someone who is triggered easily when it comes to trauma this is not the book for you. I read this book in sections and you will need breaks to really keep going. By far one of my favorite books now ! the beginning can be deemed as a little slow but it does pick up and then it becomes hard to keep up with due to the years accelerating in the timeline. If you dont cry within the first 500 pages you will in the last 300. I made it all the way until the last 100 pages and became a mess over this book. take notes! along the line you stop knowing which character is narrating in different sections of the book so please take the time to get to know your characters.

Heartbreaking

Basically, life through the eyes of trauma.

Be ready to cry

Yeah I understand it’s LONG. Completely worth it in my honest opinion. Were there parts that were horrific? Yeah of course. This book is meant to make you feel every emotion under the sun.

I wanted to love it but didn’t

It’s just ok in my opinion. Every single review I’ve read claims it “breaks you” “you’ll never recover”, I love a good sad cry your eyes out book but it did not deliver. Was it sad, yes, but it was predictable. It was a book that could have been shortened to achieve the same trauma dumps the main character had along with where you knew the book was going. It felt like the author kept thinking, I’ll add on some more trauma, and again, let’s add more. I shed a tear once at one of the happy scenes but I just expected more. It’s a story of trauma but also of friendship and love. The endless trauma didn’t justify the rave reviews. I honestly cried more at Me Before You than I did with this book which I was not expecting.

best and worst book ever

it’s the best book i’ve ever read, hanyas writing is incredible, it’s much better writing than those books people suggest on tiktok that sounds like it’s written for 13 year old haha. people have very different opinions on this book but personally i think it’s an important story to tell, it does a fantastic job at getting you to feel while telling jude’s story

terribly sad

very devastating very beautiful

Read it.

This book punched me in the gut.

devastating but brilliant

the characters in this book were so real to me that I dreamed about them. My childhood was similar to the main character's in terms of abuse so it was extremely relatable and poignant for me. It is beautiful and sad, very long, but worth reading. Her second book, People in the Trees, is not the same caliber. HOwever, her third,To Paradise, so far, is excellent.

Good but sad

Really well written, easy read. However this is so miserable, life is tragic, why would I want to read misery, I want to be uplifted. It's sad to makeup this sad sad life .there are too many out there already.