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Introduction
Book’s Name - A Little Life
Author’s Name - Hanya Yanagihara
Genre - Domestic Fiction
Language - English
Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!
Four young men, all graduates of the same prestigious New England university, set out to create adult lives in New York City at the start of Hanya Yanagihara's new novel, "A Little Life."
They are a pleasingly diverse group of people who are inextricably linked to one another: Willem Ragnarsson, the dashing son of a Wyoming ranch hand who works as a waiter but dreams of being an actor.
Malcolm Irvine is a biracial scion of an affluent Upper East Side family who has been hired as an associate by a European starchitect. Jean-Baptiste (JB) Marion, a receptionist at a downtown art magazine where he hopes to be featured one day; and Jude St. Francis, a lawyer, and mathematician whose provenance and ethnic roots are largely unknown, except to his trio of friends.
Jude was a foundling who was placed in a bag by a dumpster and raised by monks, we learn later.
The characters attend parties, find homes, go on dates, gossip, and squabble with each other for the first fifty pages or so. It's easy for the reader to believe he knows what he's getting into: this is the latest example of the postgraduate New York ensemble book, a genre with a long list of distinguished forebears, including Mary McCarthy's "The Group" and Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children.".
“New York City... had been an extension of college, where everybody had known him and JB, and the whole infrastructure of which often seemed to have been taken out of Boston and plunked down within a few blocks' radii in lower Manhattan and outer Brooklyn,” Willem thinks after his acting career takes off.
About the Book
A Little Life is divided into seven sections and follows a linear plot with memories thrown in for good measure. The narrative viewpoints in the novel change as the plot progresses. The novel begins with a third-person omniscient viewpoint that emphasizes one of Jude's, Willem's, JB's, or Malcolm's thoughts.
As the story gradually changes its attention to Jude, each character's interactions with Jude, as well as Jude's own experiences, gradually shape the story's viewpoint. First-person narratives told by an older Harold from an uncertain future punctuate this literary viewpoint.
About the Author
Yanagihara was born in Los Angeles, California, and is a fourth-generation Hawaiian. Ronald Yanagihara, a hematologist/oncologist, is from Hawaii, and her mother was born in Seoul.
Yanagihara is of Japanese ancestry, thanks to her father. Yanagihara and her family moved around a lot as a child, living in Hawaii, New York, Maryland, California, and Texas. She went to Hawaii's Punahou High School.
Yanagihara moved to New York after graduating from Smith College in 1995 and served as a publicist for several years. T: The New York Times Style Magazine's editor-in-chief is her.
People in the publishing industry were perplexed by her decision to take a job at T. Rowe Price after she published the acclaimed literary bestseller A Little Life, she has said.
Her debut book, The People in the Trees, was hailed as one of the best novels of 2013, based on the true story of virologist Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. ‘A Little Life’, Yanagihara's debut novel, was released in March 2015 with mostly positive reviews.
Psychological analysis
The book's portrayal of trauma and deprivation is subversive because it provides little hope of salvation or deliverance beyond these tender moments. It creates a moral world in which such divine redemption is not possible.
Jude and no one else ever refers to Jude's tormentors as "evil." Just once during Jude's years of misery are we told that he prays "to a God he didn't believe in."
Though he was given the name of the patron saint of lost causes by the monks who raised him, the hope of spiritual absolution or even psychological healing is missing. Friendship is the only solace left to all of us in this godless universe.
Famous Quotes
“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
“None of them really wanted to listen to someone else’s story anyway; they only wanted to tell their own.”
The Bottom Line
Yanagihara's novel has the potential to make you insane, consume you, and completely take over your life. “A Little Life” sounds primal, irreducible, like the axiom of equality-and, dark and unsettling as it is, there is beauty in it.
My ratings for the book - 5/5
You can buy a copy from Amazon right away - A Little Life
Written By - Palak Chauhan
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