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Books: Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life”

I love a good, long read. The book becomes a part of me, an extension of my arms, I panic when I don’t remember where I’ve set it.

n-ALITTLELIFE-large570At 720 pages, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is one of those reads. I carried it around for more than a week, and I loved it — though I nearly put it down, because her characters seemed so familiar to me. They are four friends from college, each ambitious in a different field, newly settled in New York City. One is an architect, another an actor, a third is a painter and the fourth — the story’s main character — is an attorney with a crippled body and mind.

His is the story of this magnificent novel, her second: how Jude St. Francis went from there (an abandoned infant found and raised by monks) to here (a Greene Street loft, a country home in Garrison, the love of his best friend). The reader learns of Jude’s harrowing youth but his friends, doctor and newly found family do not, and they puzzle over his self-destructive ways. (He’s a cutter, a failed suicide, an anorexic.)

What is he hiding? His life before: one of the monastery’s brothers persuades the young Jude to run away with him. From there, the boy becomes a sex slave. As a young teen, Jude flees a group home — and hustles to survive — but he’s captured by a sadist, who, after raping him repeatedly, runs his car over Jude.

Yes, this is difficult reading. We root for Jude over and over again: he’s a survivor, he’s whip-smart, he’s beautiful, his friends and adoptive parents adore him. But when he dares to love, as an adult, Jude is abused again, beaten and thrown down a flight of stairs.

Re-enter Willem, one of the four friends, who has become a film star. He moves in with Jude, to care for him, and falls in love with Jude. Theirs is a sweet, troubled romance.

Much happens, nothing happens: reading this book is sort of like watching the film Boyhood. No happy endings, though. Jude can’t escape his past and can’t bear his present. The book is overly long, but I didn’t want to give up any of these characters. It’s a life, richly told.

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