Secure Your Copy A Little Life Outlined By Hanya Yanagihara Compiled As Multimedia Book

my warning: do not pick this book up if you're having a bad day! On the other hand, if you're in a good space and fancy something challenging and absorbing that might take over your life for a while it's overpages long this is the one.


There are many excellent reviews out there should you wish to delve into the micro details of the plot.
But it's not my style to give so much away so I'll limit myself to a few lines on this, Ostensibly it's the tale of four students Jude, Willem, Malcolm and JB who live and study together and it tracks how their lives develop from this point.
Of course it draws in additional characters, many of whom continue to feature throughout the book, and it eventually settles into a narrative about the life of Jude, specifically, with the others becoming support characters.


Jude, it transpires, had a profoundly disturbing childhood and his full history is told in segments spread throughout the book.
The flashback sections read like a gothic horror story and it's no overstatement to say that I had to put the book down on numerous occasions, overcome by the sheer brutality of the text.


So this is one element of the book: how does someone like Jude, who has experienced such an upbringing, integrate themself into the wider world Can he succeed and prosper or will he be overcome by nightmares of the past and subsequently crash and burn A second, and for me more prominent, theme of the book is related to adult friendship and love.
In fact I'd go as far as to say it could be considered a friendship bible and you may find yourself weighing your own actions against those detailed herein I for one found myself hugely wanting in this regard.
I give myself three out of ten, It really did make me think about how I manage or fail to my relationships, the little things and the bigger things.
There are some wonderful sections on this:

The only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people better than you are not smarter, not cooler, but kinder and more generous, and more forgiving and then appreciate them for what they can teach you, and try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad or good it might be, and then to trust them, which is the hardest of all.
But the best, as well,

It was like any relationship, he felt it took constant pruning, and dedication and vigilance, and if neither party wanted to make the effort, why wouldn't it wither

Wasn't friendship it's own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem a little less lonely

Theres also a brilliant piece about finding a partner, with a theory espoused that you should identify three qualities from a wish list that are most important to you.
If these are fulfilled by the prospective partner to be then you've struck gold! Its too much to ask for any more than the three qualities to be ticked off, so you shouldn't demand it or expect it.
I found myself trying to work out which I'd choose and which I'd discard, And how would I prioritise those I'd chosen for my shortlist Too cold to be truly effective Maybe

If I have one quibble it would relate to how forgiving and how persistent Judes friends are.
Are they too good to be true In aggregate, do Jude's actions feel deserving of such treatment I'm not sure, But that's small beer when I consider the wealth of emotions I experienced in reading this book the pure reward of reading probably one of the top five books I've ever read.
I won't say I'd read it again it's just too draining but I would urge all lovers of the written word to find time for this one.
Jesus Christ.
I cried for an HOUR last night,
This freaking book. It may sound presumptuous to say in January that I've read the best book I've read all year, but reading is a lot like love.
Sometimes you just know.

A LITTLE LIFE is a title withmeanings, First, it refers to its protagonist, Jude, a man who cannot ever accept that his life is worthwhile, Second, it refers to the act of reading it, spending time in this book is really like living a version of life.


There is a third meaning, one that you don't discover until around halfway through the book when the title's words are used in a context that is like a punch to the gut.
When you read them you may find yourself having a physical reaction, your stomach may flip, your skin may go cold, you may gasp for breath.
And that is a lot of what the experience of reading this book is like, You can call these parts of the book words like "awful," but to be real you'd need to pull out your thesaurus and just line them up one after the other.
This is not a book that is easy for your emotions, You care about the people in it, so the pain can really hurt you,

You will hear that this is a book aboutfriends, It's not. They're a nice framing device, but this is a book about one person and the people who are connected to him.
His life is made up of extremes, I found myself weeping over and over again because of the love and compassion and kindness that characters in the book displayed.
But this book has some of the most harrowing and horrifying scenes I've read anywhere, It is not really spoiling anything to say this involves terrible things happening to a child, Everyone knows from the very beginning that something bad happened to Jude when he was young, It's just so much worse than you could imagine, If you have trouble reading about child abuse, it's probably best you not read this book, While it's essential to the story, it is not glossed over or referenced vaguely and what is described is truly terrible to contemplate.


Jude is not a new character, The damaged soul whose selfworth never really recovers is present in a lot of modern fiction, Yanagihara's trick, I think, is just how willing she is to plumb the depths of his darkness and its effects on those around him.
She follows him for decades, observes him in all situations, and is unflinching in her depictions, Her writing is the kind of good that you can miss if you're not paying attention, You are so caught up in her story that it's easy to miss just how agile and careful the book is.
It eases back and forth from character to character, backwards and forwards in time, and it never feels strained,

I stayed up for hours to finish this book and then couldn't sleep because I couldn't let it go.
I was overcome by the book and by the loss of finishing it,

This is a book about love and what it means and what it can do and it is the humanity of its characters and their love for each other that will stick with me.


If it was presumptuous to say this is my favorite book ofsince it tries to predict the future, I do feel that I can dig through the past and assert with certainty that this is one of the best books I've ever read.
A Little Life

is a powerful, disturbing novel, It's full of pain, desperation, and a sense of isolating sadness that sucks the reader into some very dark places, It's also the best book I've read in years,

Reading the blurb, you'll get the idea that this work is aboutcollege friends and their lives, but that's not entirely true.
While each of themain characters, and in fact all the characters in the book, are fully realized with extraordinary character development, the book is really about just one man, Jude St.
Francis.

Jude is a truly broken person he's been broken by a childhood that is both a series of horrors that are difficult to read about and a testament to what a human being can endure.
Jude doesn't come out of his childhood whole and I feel a little broken by having read about his life, I also feel that strange happiness that comes from being emotionally purged in the way that only great books can accomplish.


As Alona mentioned in her sitelinkreview, this is not a romance, but it is a love story, It's a love story about friendship that tries to overcome pain, and the bravery and sacrifice that true friendship and love sometimes require.
The romance in this book is a beautiful one, but not in the traditional sense that a reader might expect or want for the characters involved.


We all often say that we loved this character or that character in one of the many books that we read, I know I say it often, but the character of Jude St.
Francis is something special. I loved Jude more than I've loved any character before that's probably why he was capable of so thoroughly breaking my heart.
I wanted so much for him, I wanted him to be so much and get so much in life, He didn't get all that I wanted for him, but in the end, I was satisfied with where he ended up and it seemed fitting and very real.


I hate the term "triggers", but it's appropriate here, I have a few triggers of my own and they were part of this book, but I felt the writing here just brought me into those places that I don't like to go and left me, not upset or feeling traumatized, but more appreciative of my own ability to survive and thrive.
I wanted to reach into the book and take Jude's hand and tell him we'd get through it together,

This book is definitely not for everyone, but if you're up to it, you'll be thrilled by the writing.
There's pain here, and beauty along with it,

Big thanks to Alona for the many messages we exchanged while reading this, It sounds silly, but I feel as if the two of us have survived something together,


did i finish this book, or did this book finish me Brilliant, devastating, heartbreaking, Fucking hatefully sad at times, There are places that are overwrought and overwritten but this is an amazing, engrossing novel, Just wow. “Wasnt friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely”

Two months.
Books usually don't take me this long to be read, Even long books don't. So what's the reason I was stuck with this book for so long

Let's see, The never ending suffering and pain, The exaggerated and gross cruelty, The sadistic hopelessness. That's why.

I had such high expectations, And it would have been so easy to meet them, All I longed for while reading this book and talking myself into picking it up and finishing it was for the main character to find hope.
Not happiness, I cancelled out that option pretty quickly, but the hope that happiness might be an option, Spoiler: He never found it,
Now, we all know and love that kind of book, those epic and dramatic novels we read, cause they'll sweep us away and make us weep, make our heart ache.
And we love those books cause we know they will mend our broken hearts again, We will suffer, but we're going to be happy about it,
I expected to cry and weep a lot with this book, I had tears in my eyes, yes, but those were tears of desperation and hatred, Hanya Yanagihara abuses the main character maliciously, mistreats our feelings, and shows us how ugly and hurtful a single life can be.

I'm not sure what people mean when they say this was a beautiful book, Possibly the prose The setting Sure as hell not Jude's story right Sure as hell, not the fact that spoiler he literally gets fucked and crippled by countless disgusting and evil men, who make him believe that he is a worthless, ugly, nondeserving piece of trash for his entire life, so that he finally kills himself STILL convinced he is worthless, ugly and nondeserving.


What kind of book is this, How far does an author have to go Why does an author have to get so disgustingly graphic, so horrific

Yes, I admit, there were nice parts.
Yes, I enjoyed the writing, Yes I loved the travels and the infinitely rich lifestyle everyone seemed to live, but which also made this book even less credible.
Yes, of course, I celebrated Jude's achievements, friendships, his lucky moments, But all his lucky moments, all the love he deserved, all the friends he had, had to be taken from him.
And this shattered my awe for and good opinion of this novel,

This book was filled to the brim with queer pain, and frankly I'm not here for that, I don't think queer characters shouldn't be allowed to suffer, but they're owed a chance at happiness, No such luck here.

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