A review by panger97
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Read this through as a book club book with friends! It honestly took me a bit to get going with this book. The prose is beautiful, but the book does use a somewhat unconventional story telling style, as it mixes flashbacks, a bit of POV shifts and more.

The story begins with 4 boys, Jude, Malcolm, JB and Willem, just fresh out of college and trying to make it in NY. 
Malcom is an architect, Jude is a lawyer, Willem is an actor and JB is an artist. The book starts off a bit slow, but that’s because it does spend some time developing their backgrounds. However, and not really a spoiler, Jude is the most mysterious of them.

I overall enjoyed it, but I did find some parts of it to be quite unrealistic or over the top. I also found that what were main characters kind of took a backseat roll later. Not a critique per se as life happens like that, but I do wish they were developed more. 
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