![]() Willem spends much of his adulthood pursuing sexual relationships with women, before he recognizes his desire for Jude and acknowledges their friendship as a life partnership. Of the novel’s main characters, only JB unambiguously embodies an immediately recognizable and unambivalent gay identity. Three of them form their primary physical and emotional bonds with other men, though sometimes in ways that challenge the usual nomenclatures. The book follows a group of four men-Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm-over three decades of friendship, from their years as college roommates to the heights of professional success. Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, which was released in March, is one of the most buzzed-about books of the season, hailed as a “tour de force,” “extraordinary,” “elemental and irreducible,” “astonishing,” and the work of “ a major American novelist.” But no coverage of the book I’ve seen has discussed it as a novel fundamentally about gay lives-as the most ambitious chronicle of the social and emotional lives of gay men to have emerged for many years. Independent Here is an epic study of trauma and friendship written with such intelligence and depth of perception that it will be one of the benchmarks against which all other novels that broach those subjects (and they are legion) will be measured.But I think it’s possible that novel has happened, even if no one has quite realized it yet. An astonishing achievement: a novel of grand drama and sentiment, but it's a canvas Yanagihara has painted with delicate, subtle brushstrokes. The Times A Little Life makes for near-hypnotically compelling reading, a vivid, hyperreal portrait of human existence that demands intense emotional investment. It's not often that you read a book of this length and find yourself thinking "I wish it was longer" but Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind. 'Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind.' – The TimesĪ singularly profound and moving work. 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. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. 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 centre of gravity. When four graduates 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. Winner of Fiction of the Year at the British Book Awardsįinalist for the US National Book Award for Fiction The million-copy bestseller, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, by the author of To Paradise and The People in the Trees, is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. ![]() ![]() It's one of those books that stays with you forever.' - Dua Lipa 'I'm not exaggerating when I say this novel challenged everything I thought I knew about love and friendship.
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