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A Little Life

Yanagihara, Hanya. Book - 2015 Adult Book / Fiction / General / Yanagihara, Hanya, Fiction / Yanagihara, Hanya None on shelf 13 requests on 9 copies Community Rating: 4 out of 5

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"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 ... Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is [their center of gravity] Jude, ... 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"--Amazon.com.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A beautiful, painful book submitted by grubbg on June 19, 2016, 2:08pm A beautiful, painful book by the author of The People in the Trees. Yanagihara trades off moments of great horror with moments of surpassing tenderness. By the end of the story, you've been safely walked to a anguished emotional extreme... and left there. A very rare reader experience. The book stayed with me for days.

Amazing and heartbreaking submitted by jhaberich on June 16, 2017, 8:07pm This was the best book that I read in 2016. It is haunting, heartbreaking, and incredibly well written. It reduced me to tears (multiple times) and has really stayed with me. A tough book to read but well worth it.

Exquisite & Almost Unbearable submitted by Beth Manuel on June 21, 2017, 12:39pm This was such an amazing book in terms of the characters, plot, and descriptive story telling. Deeply moving and horrifying. It was the best book I've read in a long time. Nearly impossible to put down. The characters will remain in my heart forever.

Amazing! submitted by angie. on July 21, 2021, 7:54pm Inspiring, and amazing.

Do No Miss This Book submitted by MCK313 on August 29, 2021, 8:59am While the story is engaging and heartbreaking, it's the writing that I remember. It's hard to believe this is a first time published author. Her command of language will leave you amazed.

life-changing submitted by graytabby on August 7, 2022, 8:35pm everyone needs to read this at least once in their lifetime. it was truly spectacular, cover to cover.

Pain and Suffering - But to What End? submitted by zman on July 9, 2023, 10:03pm "A Little Life" is a slog; and a painful one at that. About every possible misfortune befalls its characters, and to what end? If it is trying to shine a light on abuse and the misfortune of minority communities; it does so in such an over the top way to be beyond believable. I really would recommend you avoid the mental suffering of reading this book. I wish I had seen a review like mine to dissuade me from this path.

A little life, a long book submitted by chowcy on August 26, 2023, 1:09am This book is hard to put down. It explores so many themes: life, sexuality, trauma, love, friendship, family, purpose, disability, vulnerability, mental health. It's a heart breaking and emotional book and nicely written. The downsides to this book for me are 1. The point of view switches throughout the book so it can be disorienting sometimes, especially the beginning, when you don't have a grasp of the characters yet. 2. Sometimes this book seemed like torture-porn / abuse-porn in that there were a lot of traumatic events described that weren't really necessary? The book is already lengthy and characters could've been developed even without writing all sorts of horrors as a character's back stories.

So much trauma, but an amazing story submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 18, 2024, 10:18pm CW: this whole book is based on one character experiencing vast amounts of trauma as a child. Lots and lots and lots of trauma. Having said that….

This is an astounding journey over the lives of four friends that mostly focuses on relationship, things that happen to us, and the choices we make (or is it the things we have no control over?). It is also a book that is skilled at giving just enough description (e.g. of jobs, neighborhoods, homes, etc.) to give readers a wonderful sense of setting everywhere we go. The flow of time is beautifully expressed. Conflicts between characters with each other, and between characters and the world are developed, explored, resolved (or not), and people move forward with their lives. The intersection of secondary characters, some of whom become deeply intertwined in the lives of the four main characters (Howard & Julia, Andy, Richard) add richness and depth. I can’t get this book out of my head… in the best way possible… not because of the traumas, but because of the relationships and the questions it asks. How much can we really know of others’ lives? Do we have a right to others’ stories? Can truly everything be overcome? Who is obliged to fight, for what, and for how long? How much do we get a say in each others’ battles?

This is a beautiful and brilliant book *if* you can take on a full-on trauma story.

Complex but leaning towards wrong. submitted by mollyah on July 6, 2024, 5:46pm I genuinely don’t know how to feel about this book. It’s written so wonderfully and it was pleasant to read about 60% of the time. However, I felt that the book was a mix of really profound moments that broach difficult subjects in graceful ways, but also miserable depictions of pedophilic sexual abuse. I understand why it was included; mystery about what awful things have happened to a character makes it hard for a reader to have sympathy or to relate to them. But you start to see a pattern throughout the story that Jude was sexually abused or physically abused by every single male adult who had him in their “care” as a child. Almost every monk at the monastery, Brother Luke, hundreds of men, the counselors at the boys home, his foster parents, the truckers he had to sell himself to, Dr. Traylor, and Caleb. In a twisted way, even Willem had hurt him sexually, as he admits that he could tell that Jude does not enjoy sex and continues to do it for his own good (although Jude does say he likes it a few times). The author is indulgent when it comes to how Jude is abused and therefore wears the reader down with every new story of rape and assault. It’s hard to find Jude’s story realistic, but I say that without a knowledge of how common this kind or horrific and persisten abuse is.

Then we are faced with how badly Jude wants to take his own life. We are made to believe that certain people exists that have such unspeakable trauma and who are so tortured that they have earned the right to take their own life, when in reality, people who have experienced similar types of abuse and medical issues CAN recover and DO thrive after trauma, loss, and diagnoses.

Idk, maybe I liked this book or maybe I hated it, who knows

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PUBLISHED
New York : Doubleday, [2015]
Year Published: 2015
Description: 720 pages ; 25 cm.
Language: English
Format: Book

ISBN/STANDARD NUMBER
9780385539258

SUBJECTS
Male friendship -- Fiction.
Dysfunctional families -- Fiction.
Memory -- Fiction.
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction.
Domestic fiction.
Bildungsromans.