A Little Life

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Yanagihara, Hanya	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Yanagihara, Hanya	4-week checkout	Due 05-06-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Yanagihara, Hanya	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Yanagihara, Hanya	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

"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.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

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 danzoia 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.