A Little Life

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:
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23 ratings • 9 reviews

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 actor; 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cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.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.


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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    have we ever considered that perhaps this writer might be sick in the head?

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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    If you are in a particularly sad or unhappy period of life, I suggest waiting to read this book. It's the most devastating novel I've read and the reviews that claim it to be improbably hopeful at times are overestimations... Unflinchingly honest, improbably heartbreaking, and unbelievably moving, this is a book that everyone should read, in their own time, with the expectation of being wounded, page by page. The best and hardest book I have ever read.

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  • Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

    finally done with this book after so long! this was a GREAT read & the last 100 pgs were what really got me. (Dear Comrade was so heartbreaking & had me hooked until the end) Definitely can be a tough read because of the trauma explored, but i personally was fine. i value the naivety that i came in with this book, and i know the first read will always be the most impactful. the author really sucked me in with the lives of the characters and did well to make me feel joy or sorrow for the things that would happen through the years. you spend a lot of time getting to know these characters and the lives that they live.
    worth the prolonged read!
    100% would recommend

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