A Little Life is a 2015 novel by American writer Hanya Yanagihara. Despite the length and difficult subject matter, it became a critically acclaimed bestseller.
Table of Contents
A Little Life Summary
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and fueled only by their friendship and ambition. He is the kind and handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a witty, sometimes cruel, Brooklyn-born painter looking to break into the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a major firm; and the withdrawn, brilliant and enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged with addiction, success, and pride. His greatest challenge, however, each realizes, is Jude himself, in middle age, a terrifyingly gifted litigator but an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by the What he fears is a degree of trauma than he. He will not only be unable to win but will define his life forever.
Structure
A Little Life follows a chronological narrative with flashbacks frequently interspersed. The narrative perspectives of the novel change throughout the progression of the story. At the beginning of the novel, a third-person omniscient perspective is employed that privileges the thoughts of Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm. As the story gradually shifts its focus toward Jude, its perspective progressively becomes shaped entirely around each character’s interactions with Jude and Jude’s own experiences. This literary perspective is punctuated by first-person narratives told by an older Harold, nine years in the future.
The book is divided into seven parts:
- Lispenard Street
- The Postman
- Vanities
- The axiom of equality
- The happy years
- Dear comrade
- Lispenard Street
Topics
Male Relationships
A central focus of the novel is the evolving relationships between Jude, Willem, JB, Malcolm, and Jude’s adoptive father, Harold. Jude’s life in particular is populated by men who love and care for him, as well as men who exploit and abuse him, and those who fall between the two categories. We see this directly from the moment he follows Brother Luke to the greenhouse, as well as the moments when he knows what he is doing in the motel rooms is wrong, but had still feels dedication and love for Luke from until those moments. In his life, he was the only person who was kind to him. The social and emotional lives of each male character are the fabric that weaves the novel, creating an isolated narrative bubble that provides few clues about the historical moment in which the story is set.
Trauma, recovery, and support
In an article written for New York magazine, Yanagihara states that “one of the things [she] wanted to do with this book was create a protagonist who never got better…[for him] to start healthy (or appear healthy) and end up sick.” “. – both the main character and the plot itself.” The first 16 years of Jude’s life, plagued by sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, continue to haunt him until he enters adulthood. His trauma directly affects his physical and mental health, her relationships, her beliefs, and the way she navigates the world. She struggles to overcome the damage the past has done to her body and psyche.
Writing in The New Yorker, Parul Sehgal called Jude “one of the most damned characters to ever darken a page.” She continued,
The story is based on the care and service that Jude obtains from a circle of followers who fight to protect him from his self-destructive ways; In truth, there are newborns who envy the devotion he inspires. Loyalty can be mortifying for the reader, who is recruited to join her, as a witness to Judas’s endless mortifications. Can we so easily invest in this walking chalk scheme, in this vivified DSM entry? With the plot of trauma, the logic is: evoke the wound and we will believe that a body, a person, has endured it.
Self-harm and suicide
There is obvious self-harm in the novel and Yanagihara doesn’t shy away from the details of how Jude does it or how he feels doing it. Harold’s realization is unbearably painful, more so than the news that Jude has finally committed suicide. Harold’s self-deception does not save him or Jude from pain; If anything, it increases the suffering of both.
A Little Life Review
Prepare for the most amazing, challenging, disturbing, and deeply moving book of many seasons. It is an epic about love and friendship in the 21st century that delves into some of the darkest places fiction has traveled, and yet in some unlikely way makes its way to the light. Truly a wow and a great gift for your publisher.
About The Author
Hanya Yanagihara is the author of The People in the Trees. She lives in New York City.
A Little Life PDF
A Little Life PDF Quotes
And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?
What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.
He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.
Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.
