A Little Life MP3 CD – Unabridged, November 3, 2015

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.]

I finished Hanya Yanagihara's emotionally draining, 'A Little Life', over three months ago and in the time since, I felt I needed to recover from her roller coaster of a novel. Imagine though a roller coaster that is on fire, but has classical music playing on its back row as it dips and ascends into screaming terror and melancholic euphoria.Upon completing this novel, I was fatigued, drained, and spent of my emotions because I have never equally hated and admired a book so much in my literary life. On two occasions while reading, I took a shot of tequila to get through particular sections. Sections where when the tequila did not help, I put the book down because the book's content read like being hit by a Mack truck at full speed. Nothing in this novel is subtle, as a matter of fact, I equate reading it to a jackhammer puncturing hard-baked cement and you the reader is the cement. The storytelling is piercing, with plangent themes that gutted my insides, and it is so visceral that it ostensibly paints Yanagihara to be a sadistic fiend for unleashing a literary work such as this. She's of course not, she's simply a good writer who knows how to bring a heartbreaking story to life.Yes, 'A Little Life' is an agonizing read, but one that was masterfully written, offering all manner of literary rewards. Employing use of a dense, particularized writing style, Yanagihara's prose is architectural, cerebral, and drawn out at a pace that is like molasses rolling up a sand dusted hill. From page one, I found the four protagonists to be engaging, but forebodingly so, where I immediately knew that there will be a lot to unpack in the subsequent pages ahead. Though the novel's setting is contemporary, Yanagihara tells it in an odd but effective flashback mixed with present day style where the context of time is always abstract. Specific dates or years are never used, instead we get descriptors such as "nine years ago," "on his fifth birthday," "four years after..." This approach bothered me initially, because it made some of the flashback scenes less textural. But Yanagihara is such a good writer, she made the technique work, as it became tolerable as I read on. Again, nothing in this novel is subtle or plain, but despite the elaborately detailed descriptions, which I admired, the novel is readable. Although, I think some readers may find it to be plodding.For me, I think one of Yanagihara's strength as a writer is her ability to flesh out characters as if they were filigree, branching them out far and wide, but characters that have a centered, yet deeply flawed souls. As well written as each of the characterizations are here, I admit that I dislike every one of them. The four protagonists - Jude, Willem, Jean-Baptist, and Malcolm, plus two major secondary ones, Andy, and Harold - all made my emotions seesaw from vexation to sympathy, but mostly vexation. Jude, the center of the novel's story, is especially maddening. He is a self imposed martyr, at times grating, and is in constant need of attention, attention that is wanted or not. Yet, I couldn't help but be heartbroken for him due to his disquieting childhood and unenviable lot in life.Another source of frustration was that 'A Little Life' has in my opinion, an uncomfortable air of incestuous camaraderie between the six protagonists, a bothersome co-dependency that drove me up the wall. Everyone in Jude's life - Willem, Jean-Baptist, Malcolm, Andy, and Harold, individually and collectively coddle him to such an extant that it borders on criminal. I was bothered that each of these characters allowed their hubris and selfishness to take precedence over the necessary tough love that Jude needed. The enabling and coddling became reductive, and peeved me so badly that I yelled out at my book several times. Still, despite my irritation at the imbecilic actions of the characters, I couldn't help but regress into pity and gut-wrenching grief for each of their lives. Eventually, my dislike of the characters became irrelevant, as I don't think characters have to be likable in order to be effective. At any given time, I was mad at each of them, but in their frustrating behavior, they made me think long and hard about human frailty.Despite my frustrations, and even at 720 densely packed pages, 'A Little Life' is a worthy read. Make no mistake, as it did me, this is a novel that will peel your insides and likely wreck you. There were moments where I could only read certain chapters in short spurts, with breaks between paragraphs because the content is so unsettling. Nevertheless, I read it all, because even though this is a fictional story, I can't help but think that it is the life that some unfortunate souls have lived, and or are living right now.I highly recommend 'A Little Life', but again be warned, the content is visceral, EXCRUCIATING, and unrelenting. The depravity and evil that Yanagihara has showcased in these pages is unreal, and is unlike any I've ever read. As you progress though the novel, prepare yourself before reading pages 323-340, 392-403, 417-423. The entire book is not easy to get through, but these pages are especially ungodly. I don't care who you are or how strong you are, I think this book is one that will wreck most. I give it 4.75 stars out of 5 for the writing, the themes, and the fleshed out characterizations, even though the novel as a whole is positively diabolical.