A Little Life

I remember the book cover was the other one and was kinda disappointed at first that it's the cover with the face but it's so floppy that I actually don't mind it now

What do we expect of our friends? Or should we not expect anything from them? Is friendship a balance of give and take? Other than the fact that friends are those having the same intellectual and emotional vibes, one who doesn’t take you for granted, what qualities do we see in a potential friend?A little life is a story about four friends, who meet at the undergrad level, Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and JB. Willem's love for Jude is magical. An orphan, Judea at the age of thirty gets adopted by an angelic guy named Harold. I adored the part where Harold adopts Jude. And I loved the character too.Jude is a brilliant, handsome guy with a slight limp due to his spinal injury. He has had a traumatic past where he was raped, sexually abused, and tortured even. The past torments him throughout the book due to which he fears any relationship. He is self-loathing, self-harming, self-doubting,finding no salve for his mental gnawing. Jude’s past and its psychological impact were depressing and heartbreaking.The beginning of the book felt like Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, where we see struggling youngsters and part of the book read like Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. The author has done an amazing job of writing about a traumatic, sexually abused person and how it affects him throughout his life. It read like Lolita, being narrated from Lolita’s point of view. The toughest reads were the parts he'd hurt himself. I felt horrible reading those parts.Although he has another amazing friend who is an orthopaedic surgeon, Andy who helps him through many situations, he rarely refers him to a therapist. He visits the therapist almost towards the end and mostly avoids going to him. It would have been so much easier if he had been to a therapist right from the time he was at the university. But why didn't he go to a therapist from the beginning?? And why didn’t Andy, Willem and Harold force him to see a therapist?He gets lucky finding amazing friends and an ever-loving father, all of whom love him for his outlook and the good soul that he is rather than his appearance or his so-called ‘flaws’.In an interview that I watched on YouTube, the author says that the book is a fairy tale/fantasy which means the friendship portrayed is highly improbable. It’s exactly like Cinderella, who magically gets a fairy godmother when she is in distress.It is a depiction of a perfectly ideal situation, where there are friends who dote on him forever, giving utmost care and love selflessly, prioritizing Jude over themselves. Life is full of difficulties and hardships, people don't like to hear about illnesses, injuries, and pains. Often, they sympathise but do not empathise. If one were to recreate these situations in real life such people might not exist or might not be so involved.It’s a brilliantly written book with some amazing quotes but a tragic tale not meant for the weak-hearted!

مع لاسف الكتاب وصلني غلافه ورقي و انا طلبت غلاف صلب

It had a torn page

floppy and very nice addition

You know when someone talks to you about a “sad book,” and you immediately think, “well, someone precious is going to die at the end?” A Little Life has been called tragic, depressing, a masterpiece that you cannot get through without a wad of tissues nearby, and so naturally, I assumed someone would die at the end. I went into this book prepared to not get too attached to the characters, but it’s inevitable to not connect with people who are the subjects of an 800-page book with minimal spacing and tiny font. I’d like to think I went into this book prepared, but my preparation got me nowhere.This novel does not lead up to a sad ending. Let me explain. Calling this novel “sad” is a massive understatement. It is 800 pages of tragedy after tragedy, because the “sad” doesn’t follow the pattern we are used to. It’s not happy and pleasant until the end where something sad happens- no, this book is a depressing hunk of paper with very little happiness in it. A Little Life is a long, winding tunnel spotted with skylights. You walk forward in the darkness with a couple of friends, and you are struck with sadness after sadness. Your friends get lost in the tunnel, you fall and break your arm, and then the tunnel gives you a foot of light where you can look around and take a breather before plunging yourself into the darkness. You don’t know what’s at the end, because the tunnel gives you no hints. You don’t know if you’ll exit into the open. You don’t know if you’ll hit a dead-end, but you keep on walking because by this point, your masochism has kicked in and you’re addicted to the torture.We follow the stories of four characters, all college-friends who have moved from Boston to New York City in order to fulfill their dreams. Malcolm is an aspiring architect- timid and shy, whose overbearing parents are his pride and shame. JB is a painter- arrogant, optimistic and full of life, JB is the only one among his friends who is certain he will make it in life. Willem is an actor, calm and steady who has no family but his three best friends. But while the three have their own lives, their bond is strengthened by the presence of one Jude St. Francis. Jude is enigmatic. Despite having been friends for years, nobody knows anything about him; not his ethnicity or his sexuality. They don’t know anything about his childhood or his years before attending university. Jude has an injury; an accident severely limited the use of his legs, but nobody even knows how this came to be. But Jude is quiet, and he is kind and generous and dependent. And so the three friends lend their shoulders silently for him to lean on. This book is not set in one time period: years and decades pass, and each character matures, develops and experiences success and the perils of life, sometimes together, other times apart. As the narrative progresses, one thing becomes crystal clear: Jude has gone through an unspeakable childhood trauma. He is fragile and broken, battling so hard with inner demons that never seem to leave him.If you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-packed, plot-centered novel, put this book down and walk far, far away. A Little Life reads more like an in-depth character study than anything else. Despite there being a large, diverse, well-fleshed out cast of characters- make no mistake: this novel is about Jude. This novel is about Jude’s life, his depression, his experiences, his feelings of pain and insurmountable shame. It is a story about Jude’s relationships and his impact on the people around him. It is a story about love and loss, of betrayal and friendship, of perseverance and giving in. And because it follows the story of such a broken, intense young man, it is a difficult read.It is a difficult read in more ways than one. Firstly, it is 800 pages long with very little action, with large chunks of paragraphs detailing the little moments in life, detailing theorems and laws and art and literature. Large chunks that talk about family, sex, career and the meaning of love- things that may not even need to be in the book. These large chunks familiarize you with our characters’ backgrounds, their introspections and streams of consciousness, their experiences with each other and outside of their immediate relationships. The characters in this novel feel real; more than once, I felt like I could reach out and touch them. They feel like friends, comrades you’ve known for a long, long time. Their happiness genuinely excites you, and their sadness genuinely devastates you. You also become so invested in their relationships with each other, almost as if you’re a mediator.Apart from the thematic material, what makes this novel so hard to digest is the characters. I’m not exaggerating when I say that they feel like friends- watching them suffer through unimaginable things hurt me. I have never felt this way before. Halfway through the book, I had already cried at least twice, excluding the point where I sobbed for ten pages straight. And then again after. Yanagihara’s empathetic portrayal of human nature, of human decency and monstrosity is so spot-on. I don’t know what else I can say.Secondly, it is brutal in its honest, unflinching portrayal of mental illness. There were several moments in this novel where I had to set the book aside and steady my breathing. It is uncomfortable. It depicts self-harm and depression graphically but not gratuitously, with sensitivity without doing it for “the shock factor.” Finally, the constant jumps in time frame makes this book far from a casual read. You need to keep up. Each ‘section’ takes place a few years after the previous one, but sometimes Yanagihara alternates time within paragraphs as well. One time you’re seeing the friends’ lives when they are 35, and you jump back in the middle of a paragraph to when they are 28. It can be quite jarring if you’re not paying attention.But having said that, Yanagihara’s writing is easy to keep up with. Daunting as it may be with its intelligent discussion of many themes (some of which I mentioned above) and the sheer scale of the book, her writing is welcoming. Complex, full of emotion and genuine feeling, full of ‘quotable’ things without it ever being overbearing or ‘too much.’ Authors writing in the literary fiction genre so often give off the impression that they need to prove something, but Yanagihara writes with effortless grace and poise. She’s not trying to prove anything; this is her in 800 pages- take it or leave it.But despite all my praises, this is not a perfect book. My main complaint is the length. Bear with me. I have no problems with lengthy books, as long as the length is justified. Many will probably disagree with me, but I felt that the novel could have been cut short by at least 50 or 100 pages. For example, towards the beginning, we get such an in-depth look into JB and Malcolm’s characters, much of which doesn’t come back after the first section. Perhaps their backgrounds could have been weaved more seamlessly into the narrative as the book went along. A lot of the objective discussions about science and mathematics were beautifully written, sure, but didn’t feel like they needed to be there. But I’ve got to give Yanagihara this: despite the length, and despite the discussions on objective topics, I was hanging on to her every word. I didn’t skim a single page- I was just that invested.So, here we are. You and me at the mouth of the tunnel. I made it out, and you’re asking me if you should take the chance. “It’s difficult. It’s long. It’s even terrifying at times, but-” and I prod you into the darkness, “it’s also exhilarating and beautiful and one hell of an experience.”

I’ll be blunt upfront. A LITTLE LIFE (2015) by Hanya Yanagihara is the most soul-wrenching novel I have perhaps ever read. In the novel Yanagihara follows in minute detail the lives of four men who become friends, “a clique,” in college and continue to be close into their late fifties. JB Marion begins his work life as a “receptionist at a small but influential magazine based in SoHo that covered the downtown art scene,” with ambitions to become an artist. Fatherless since he was three, JB is of Haitian descent, tends toward being overweight, and is gay. Willem Ragnarsson, handsome and “liked by everyone” starts out as a waiter, but has his eye set on becoming a professional actor on stage and screen. In ways, Malcolm Irvine is the outlier of the group, still living at home with his parents who are a couple of mixed-race. He is wealthy and determined to become an architect. Malcolm appears to be oblivious of his appeal to others, even naïve, somewhat confused about his sexuality, and unmindful of his financial situation although generous to his friends and others when they are in need. At the core of the four friends is Jude St. Francis who holds the group together—not so much by what he does even though he is considerably bright, loyal, and hard-working, as well as determined to become a prosecutor, but because his friends care about him and Jude has needs. Parentless and with a mysterious past all of which he never speaks about and never having “a girlfriend or a boyfriend,” Jude has trouble with his legs and is frequently in pain. Although he never complains nor asks for help, his friends are very aware of his situation and go out of their way to assist Jude in as tactful of a manner as possible.Mainly set in New York City, as A LITTLE LIFE unfolds, Yanagihara brings into the fold other characters of importance including a doctor, Andy Contractor, and a former law professor, Harold Stein and his wife Judy, all of whom play important roles in in the novel, as well as a host of minor characters. It is, however, the four friends who remain central to the story, especially Jude and Willem, roommates in college and who remain the closest of the friends. The bulk of Yanagihara’s novel is told in chronicle order, but as the novel progresses, there are more flashbacks and memories, some of which get repeated with added detail as they surface, most of them revolving around Jude who becomes more and more the novel’s central character.When thinking about tragic characters in prose fiction, no one comes my mind as being more tragic than Jude Fawley from Thomas Hardy’s JUDE THE OBSCURE (1894/1895) which may be the motivation for the author’s name for her main character—Jude, “the patron saint of lost causes.” Although readers soon come to the realization Jude is a physically and emotionally scarred individual, Yanagihara’s revelations about the details of Jude’s history are painfully slow in coming—mirroring the complexity and rawness of those very memories which haunt and torment Jude. They are memories which have shaped, or rather distorted, his life. In one flashback the author reveals twenty-five years in the past, Ana, Jude's now deceased “first and only social worker” warning Jude during a hospital stay, “…you have to talk about these things while they’re fresh. Or you’ll never talk about them… and it’s going to fester inside you, and you’re always going to think you’re to blame. You’ll be wrong, of course, but you’ll always think it.”There are relatively few highs in Jude’s life and when they occur, the reader is bound to find them tearful moments of joy. The increasingly close friendship between Jude and Willem with both of them at the zenith of their careers is complex—filled paradoxically with the bounty which human relationships can contain along with enormous peril. Unfortunately, most of Jude’s life is a series of unrelenting, dreadful, terrifying, shattering lows and betrayals accompanied by self-destructive impulses which become worse and worse, adding to a man’s already burdensome childhood, youth, and life-long post-traumatic stress. Jude’s is a portrait of suffering beyond comprehension and the brutal perpetrators of his torments throughout his life are the epitome of unfathomable, monstrous human behavior.Thus, A LITTLE LIFE does not make for easy reading. It is emotionally jolting and at the same time riveting. So vivid are Yanagihara’s expose of the quartet of characters, the reader becomes one with them, making it a quintet. The author’s characters are real to life, the dialogue is vivid and genuine, and the quality of the writing as well as the tone of the novel is unswerving. Although Yanagihara’s central characters meet with sometimes staggering personal and professional successes, there are also failures and tragedies, both past and present, and always a dire cloud which encircles them all, especially Jude. Due to her immense and encompassing narrative skills, readers will eventually brace themselves so that whenever a horrifying revelation is made about Jude’s secret past or his present, there is likely worse to come.A narrative trick Yanagihara pulls a little over a quarter of the way into the novel and again at the half-way point, moving from an omniscient narrator to what clearly is a first person although not readily identifiable narrator, is bound to strike the reader as both curious and possibly even portentous. It is left up to the reader to recognize and interpret for themselves the meaning of the author’s temporary changes in point of view. She does the same switch near the book’s conclusion which eventually brings the work to its shocking climax and even more emotionally numbing, traumatic end.Clearly, A LITTLE LIFE is not for everyone. even though the novel is a modern masterpiece of writing and prose fiction and a work which will haunt the reader for a long time. The most resilient reader may very likely find there are times when they simply must close the book and exit the bleakness of the world Yanagihara creates before picking the book up again. Others may discover there are times when they simply want to throw the book across the room. Some readers may find the book impossible to finish because it is so emotionally draining. Regardless of the reader’s reaction to the novel, A LITTLE LIFE is an incredible accomplishment and a work which haunt the reader for a long time.[NOTES: (1) A LITTLE LIFE has recently been declared one of “The 20 Best Novels of the Decade” by Emily Temple for The Literary Hub on December 23, 2019. (2) The book’s cover photo is from a series of photos taken in the 1960s by Peter Hujar. The photo is titled “Orgasmic Man.” The photo is purposefully ambiguous. Is the man depicted experiencing joy or pain? (3) A stage adaptation of A LITTLE LIFE ran in Amsterdam in 2018 and 2019 with limited runs, only, most of which were in Dutch.]

This is a novel that requires patience, commitment, and perseverance. Not just because of its length (720 pages), but, because it doesn't exactly grab you swiftly. It took me almost 300 pages to feel installed in the story, rather than just a visitor hovering outside the narrative. Yanagihara is long-winded, although not generally dull, yet she also, in my opinion, only fully realized one character, Jude St. Francis, the successful but troubled Ivy League-educated lawyer with a tragic, troubled past. The mostly interior story is ostensibly about these four friends who meet in their teens, and their ongoing friendship for over thirty years. But, really, it is a profile of Jude (with some shared traits of the Obscure one).Jude was ritually abused as an orphan, although the author is quite circumspect about the details, which take 2/3 of the novel to completely fill in (and even then, there's always more). However, even before I was enervated by the laboriously slow reveal, the reader "gets it,"--this isn't exactly new stuff for our topical times, but it always dismays us to hear about disturbed, violent people who abuse children. By the time she filled in the shocking details, I was astonished, yes, but also a bit weary.There's also a lot of repetition of Jude's adult coping behaviors (in ways, almost as horrifying as the abuse)-- but necessary, I suppose, to really be intimate with his ongoing struggles, to demonstrate the limitless loneliness and pain one suffers when life is clouded by shame. But, I admit to some impatience, too. I was straining to believe that everyone was ALWAYS therapeutic with Jude. He was glum and intractable, refusing to talk about his past (with a few people, he revealed bits and pieces)--but, as I said, their ability to be so 110% willing and available for Jude was really too good to be true. Rarely, they lost patience-- carefully manipulated by the author to usually further the story along (and Jude).Jude's three friends, ones he has known since college--Willem, the successful actor, Malcolm, the successful architect, and JB, the successful artist (actually, all the characters in this book are so highly successful as to be almost untouchable, no pun intended), start out as developing characters, and then slip into either straw men and/or saints. Then there is Andy, the virtuous and always available surgeon, and Harold, the law professor with the patience of Job. All these men (with one seeming exception--JB, who makes a few mistakes) are so thoroughly, unerringly, and impossibly pledged to Jude that it eventually strikes a false note. All of these very busy people--world travelers--seem to have drop-everything time and an almost pious forbearance for Jude, the enigmatic one who refuses to reveal his past and his harrowing abuses. There were virtually no female characters--well, Harold's wife, Julia, and Malcolm's, wife, but they were nothing but generic passers-by, even if (like Julia) they played an important role. They were all tools for the character of Jude.If I were to name a second, well-developed character, it would be the setting. No matter how many books are set in New York City, there are as many ways and more to bring it alive. Yanagihara has a sharp eye for living spaces, architecture, color, and art, and in this way, she gave New York its singular charisma. I would also assert that having an architect and an artist as two of Jude's friends allowed her to buttress the book with her eye for these details, which I enjoyed greatly. JB's installations (of course, mostly about Jude or himself, and conveniently about the other friends for later absorption) added shade to the story, but, again, it seemed that everything was for Jude's character.This is a mostly interior novel, which is why I demand either faceted characters or compelling ideas. The author flirts with ideas through the art world but there's nothing inherently philosophical about the novel. Moreover, the author gave all the other characters, except for Jude, short shrift. Willem actually starts out engaging. His childhood was also tragic, but for different reasons. Yet, too soon, Willem turns into a big movie star and his character a cursory device for Jude. Willem is the most saintly of all the characters, an actor who is never self-absorbed, who isn't even aware of his fame when he walks into a room. He's portrayed as way too humble to be organic.Most of the men in this novel made me think of those Seurat paintings, where the people whose faces we never see too well are diminished or faded into the background. Is that what the author intended? I don't think so, because in her debut book,  The People in the Trees , she had several well-realized characters. Moreover, in 700+ pages, she includes Jude's friends frequently, but the more they are present, the more absence I felt of their true natures. She also covered the topic of child abuse in both novels, but, in TREES, it's for the reader to ascertain, over the course of the suspenseful story, whether the narrator is reliable or not, and if the child abuse really did take place. In A LITTLE LIFE, we know it took place, and we follow the abused child mostly as an adult.Just a side note: Yanagihara tends to pair abuse with a life of privilege. In  The People in the Trees , the alleged abuser is a scholar/scientist. In this second book, the victim of abuse grows to be in the elite 1%. I would like to see her take it down a notch--show how many abused children are stuck in the system or live in the real world as a worker bee, not touched by highbrow living, and too impaired to put together a successful life. Jude, however, is an accomplished pianist with a beautiful voice, is well-read, a superior cook, and is what I would identify as that rare contemporary Renaissance man--but he works as a corporate lawyer 80-100 hours/week, where his troubles seem to melt away on the job.Regardless of the flaws, I stuck with the novel; Jude was so captivating, even in his reticence, that I wanted to see it through. I think Yanagihara could have shaved off a few hundred pages without hurting the narrative, especially as she didn't seem intent on filling out the characters beyond a certain point.At the beginning, there was evidence that there would be nuance regarding race and sexual orientation. A few comments were made at the start, coyly referring to the fact that only Willem is white. Jude was "undetermined," a mix of backgrounds, and Malcolm and JB were black. So why a white man on the cover of the book? Is that supposed to be Willem? That seems disingenuous to me, as the main character, Jude, is not Caucasion. That was just one of the several manipulations that seemed inorganic.Also, there seemed to be little or no controversy about gay issues. Some of the characters were gay or bi-, but they didn't seem to go through any hardships, past or present, with their sexual orientation. It was so smooth that it was glossed over. Parents--proud and accepting, peers--proud and accepting, colleagues--proud and accepting. Nothing in these men's lives stirred any controversy or hardship (unless it has to do with their relationship with Jude)--just success. Even JB's problems were disposed of quickly. But, I suppose if you are in the 1%, being black and gay buys you a ticket from discrimination? These men had a paved avenue, so much more than my black and/or gay friends ever did. However, her prose was always strong, solid, subtle:"...he imagined Jude as a magician whose sole trick was concealment, but every year, he got better and better at it, so that now he only had to bring one wing of the silken cape he wore before his eyes and he would become instantly invisible, even to those who knew him best."3.5 stars The People in the TreesThe People in the Trees

This book is a lot and I strongly recommend looking up content warnings before starting and making sure you're in the right headspace for it.I went into this expecting it to be devastating - which it was - but it surprised me more with its tenderness. The description says it's about four friends, but really the book centers around one person, Jude, and the people around him as he struggles against a harrowing past that seems to shape his life even in late adulthood. Jude's inability to accept himself as somebody worthy of kindness is a running theme throughout the book - and so is the unconditional kindness that is shown to him by several characters anyway. This book shows not just what it's like to struggle against your own life every day but how difficult it is to watch someone you love go through that struggle, to hold onto to someone who wants to let go.The writing is beautiful, I had to read several lines multiple times simply because I was awed by the author's command over language. It's rare for a 720 paged book that relies heavily on its characters with no clear plot to hold one's attention this well.By no means is this a happy book. In fact, it gets darker and bleaker the further you get into it. It's unflinching in its portrayal of horrifying events but equally attentive to its tender moments. I found its commentary on friendship, aging, disability, mental illness and love to be quite thought provoking. This is a book that will make you feel.

I was particularly impressed with the paper quality used for this edition. The pages are smooth, and the weight of the paper is just thick enough to prevent any distracting show-through from the text on the reverse side. The paper has a pleasant, slightly off-white color that reduces eye strain and creates a more enjoyable reading experience overall.What truly sets this paperback edition apart is the attention to detail in the bookbinding. The spine is sturdy and flexible, allowing the book to lay flat on a surface, making it easier to read without having to wrestle with the pages. The pages are neatly bound, and I didn't encounter any issues with loose or falling pages, even after multiple readings.