![]() ![]() ![]() Jude, we later learn, was a foundling, deposited in a bag by a dumpster and raised by monks.įor the first fifty or so pages, as the characters attend parties, find apartments, go on dates, gossip, and squabble with each other, it is easy for the reader to think he knows what he’s getting into: the latest example of the postgraduate New York ensemble novel, a genre with many distinguished forbears, Mary McCarthy’s “The Group” and Claire Messud’s “The Emperor’s Children” among them. Francis, a lawyer and mathematician, whose provenance and ethnic origins are largely unknown, even by his trio of friends. They are a pleasingly diverse crew, tightly bound to each other: Willem Ragnarsson, the handsome son of a Wyoming ranch hand, who works as a waiter but aspires to be an actor Malcolm Irvine, the biracial scion of a wealthy Upper East Side family, who has landed an associate position with a European starchitect Jean-Baptiste (JB) Marion, the child of Haitian immigrants, who works as a receptionist at a downtown art magazine in whose pages he expects, one day soon, to be featured and Jude St. 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.At the beginning of Hanya Yanagihara’s new novel, “A Little Life,” four young men, all graduates of the same prestigious New England university, set about establishing adult lives for themselves in New York City. 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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