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A review by biblioauds
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
5.0
A Little Life: SPOILER FREE
Usually, when I finish a book, I can definitively say whether there is a chance I will be revisiting it in the future. I'm not typically a rereader, so the answer to that question I ask myself is usually no. Once I know the twists and turns, the roadmap of a book, I don't feel the need to engage with the characters again. Their story is known to me now, and will forever be something I carry with me. With A Little Life, these characters are definitely ones I will be carrying with me, but ones I don't mind revisiting. There's a resounding theme throughout this book, under the layers of pain, despair, and misery. Friendship, one that breaks and bends and twists and cracks, one that is mended, holds tension, relieves tension, makes you bite your lip and want to finish the next page because you just HAVE to know how these characters are going to interact with each other next. This friendship, told without much plot to hold it together, but rather as a narrative as you're watching life pass by these characters that offer so much real, relatable emotion, is a real, relatable friendship. There are reasons for friendship, for relationships, for the things we do and don't do, for the things we reveal to people and what is kept hidden. This book called to me through its reality. I want to experience that again, really dive into why the characters did and said what they did knowing what the end result is, like a show that starts with the end before the beginning.
This book made me sob, laugh, curl up in pain, want to smack a fictional character, and even inspired me to look at New York in a whole new light when I decided to make a visit. A book I will never, ever forget.
Usually, when I finish a book, I can definitively say whether there is a chance I will be revisiting it in the future. I'm not typically a rereader, so the answer to that question I ask myself is usually no. Once I know the twists and turns, the roadmap of a book, I don't feel the need to engage with the characters again. Their story is known to me now, and will forever be something I carry with me. With A Little Life, these characters are definitely ones I will be carrying with me, but ones I don't mind revisiting. There's a resounding theme throughout this book, under the layers of pain, despair, and misery. Friendship, one that breaks and bends and twists and cracks, one that is mended, holds tension, relieves tension, makes you bite your lip and want to finish the next page because you just HAVE to know how these characters are going to interact with each other next. This friendship, told without much plot to hold it together, but rather as a narrative as you're watching life pass by these characters that offer so much real, relatable emotion, is a real, relatable friendship. There are reasons for friendship, for relationships, for the things we do and don't do, for the things we reveal to people and what is kept hidden. This book called to me through its reality. I want to experience that again, really dive into why the characters did and said what they did knowing what the end result is, like a show that starts with the end before the beginning.
This book made me sob, laugh, curl up in pain, want to smack a fictional character, and even inspired me to look at New York in a whole new light when I decided to make a visit. A book I will never, ever forget.