A Little Life The Million-Copy Bestseller

I first discovered Yanagihara through her divisive first novel The People in the Trees. I found the story it told to be a grim yet fascinating one and when I heard about A Little Life I immediately wanted to read it. I ordered a paperback (I’m not a lover of hardbacks) from the States and waited with barely contained anticipation for it to arrive.The book follows the life of four best friends all the way from college to their later adult lives. The first third of the book is equally split between the four as they struggle through the years after college and look to forge their way in life. JB is an artist with a number of personal issues, Willem a kindly aspiring actor, Malcolm an insecure architect and Jude, a brilliant yet damaged man, who could do many things yet decides on a life in law. Essentially Jude is the crux of this friendship as, owing to an utterly horrific youth, his friends rally round to protect him and support him through the disabilities and fragilities he acquired along the way.After a point the book begins to focus solely on the relationship between Willem and Jude and JB and Malcolm become, for the most part, peripheral characters. They are replaced by Harold and Julia, a man and wife who meet Jude while he is at college and grow extremely fond of him. Although this shift in direction disappointed me at first (I especially enjoyed reading about JB’s life and his problems in the first section of the novel) I soon slipped into this new groove and quickly began to enjoy the new narrative possibilities this change created. As a result of these changes, the end of the book comes as no surprise to the reader but, nonetheless, I found it difficult to fight back the tears.A Little Life is similar in some regards, yet greatly different to, The People in the Trees. In A Little Life, Yanagihara again confronts many of the harsh and unpalatable traits of the human condition (child abuse, self-harming, graphic violence) that turned many readers away from her first novel. However, many of the characters she writes about here display an abundance of enviable human qualities – patience, love, loyalty – that were sorely lacking in the ones she created for The People in the Trees. This book evokes strong emotion – just like People in The Trees did – but this time those emotions are more favourable than the utter contempt and disgust I felt towards the protagonists of her first novel. I won’t lie, the book almost had me on the verge of tears a number of times and I’m usually a hard and unfeeling person. From the reviews I’ve read, many people found the book forced and schmaltzy but I found it genuinely affecting – perhaps I am getting soft in my old age. Yanagihara writes so cleverly and touchingly of the men’s friendship that it genuinely helped me create a brilliantly vivid image of the friends in my mind’s eye; an image which stayed with me throughout the entirety of the book. I was also able to strongly connect with the feelings of many of the characters within its pages and perhaps this helped me appreciate and enjoy them more than other readers were able.Sure, the book is long and can at times be repetitious, and in it Yanagihara has a tendency to reuse words too closely together (over and over, cried and cried, struggled and struggled, argued and argued, etc) but for me, strangely, the very mundanity of the book is one of its most endearing traits. Real-life friendships are often valued on how comfortable companions feel around each other through the more tedious aspects of our co-existence and I think Yanagihara conveyed these uninspiring moments with such skill that they became enjoyable. I will admit that there is a level of over sentimentality present, especially concerning Jude, which I can understand will turn some people off. And, speaking of Jude, his unwavering self-loathing and total inability to even begin to accept his friends’ feelings about him did grate occasionally but, overall, these elements rarely bothered me that much. Although the book was long I never found it a chore and I devoured huge chunks of it in single sittings, something I always associate with powerful books that resonate with me.Before I wrap up, a warning to potential buyers: there are, just as in The People in the Trees, some very shocking scenes within this book’s pages. There are graphic depictions of sexual abuse (some involving children) and brutal violence. Yanagihara does not shy away from these unpalatable acts and actions and her no holds barred approach to these scenes may rear discomfort or indeed disgust in some readers. There are also a number of intense scenes involving bodily disfigurement and self-harm that people with a queasy disposition might find repulsive and, as such, should bear this in mind when considering a purchase.I’d highly recommend this book to anyone thinking about reading it – despite A Little Life clocking in at over 800 pages long I was sorry for it to end. Hanya Yanagihara is an accomplished and emotive writer and she is quick becoming one of my favourite authors; I am excited to see what she produces in the future. For me this has been one of the most memorable, moving and engrossing books I’ve read in a long time. I’m off to check out the actual Man Booker Prize winner now as, if it managed to best this novel, it must be some book.