A review by birdghosting
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is a book that will stay with you for a very long time, for better or for worse. It seems you either love or hate this book, and I came out loving it (even though I ugly cried through over 20% of it—and it's a long book).

As someone who usually reads fantasy and not much set in the real world, I could not put this book down once I got past the introductory section. It was very easy for me to get attached to Jude, who the entire book revolves around (I didn't even realize when starting that this is mainly his story). I was rooting for him the entire way through, desperately wanting to know more about him at each turn as it would offer me something new as a treat.

The characters all felt like they lived real and true lives, and written to perfectly match how you're meant to feel about them in that moment. Even certain characters who I loved the whole way through made errors that I hated reading about, thought to myself that I wouldn't forgive someone doing that to me—and that's life. The relationships everyone has with each other, not just with Jude, are the strongest part of the book.

I'm not used to reading such long prose, but it was very enjoyable. I did have several moments where I would start reading one sentence and get lost among the different branching off thoughts and ideas the single sentence goes through, and I'd have to return to the beginning of the sentence to remember what it was meant to be about. This would also happen with chapters, which would sometimes go into a completely different topic than where we first started before finally circling back around. There was also a lot of academic and legal talk that made me wish I were going back to university, and I didn't have a good mind map of the locations and geography talked about, which makes me curious if someone who knows New York well would be able to picture it clearly.

I think about this story at least once a day.
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