www.annemoore.net

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Also in the blog

I know: cooking? I never write about that. But I haven’t had a good read since Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and I don’t like writing “bad” reviews. I will say I was underwhelmed by Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl, which lacked a unifying thread. I learned too little about her writing life and too much

(...)

I am just returned from my favorite reading spot, our home on Lac Pythonga, where I sit with a book on the dock or the beach or stretch out on our new couch and/or reading chair with ottoman (thank you, Georgia Dent) — quiet spaces all. What a treat: to read for hours at a

(...)

“My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate.” — Henry Miller And so it goes with Ian McEwan’s dozen or so novels, linked not only by their author and his smart prose but also by the extremes I’ve experienced

(...)

2 thoughts on "Books: Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life”"