By Hanya Yanagihara

Reviewed by Melanie Cutting

ALittle Life is a BIG BOOK, weighing in at a full 814 densely packed pages. Published in 2015, it won the Kirkus Prize, and was a Man Booker Prize finalist that same year. A New York Times bestseller, named one of the Best Books of the Year by no less than 15 esteemed magazines and newspapers, as well as NPR, clearly this hefty book comes with an equally hefty roster of recommendations. It is the second book by New York based author Hanagihara, preceded in 2013 by The People in the Trees.

So, what does this author need 814 pages to say? A Little Life follows the lives of four young men who meet at a college in the Boston area in the 1980s, graduate, move to New York City, and become lifelong friends. For the first several chapters, as the characters are being introduced, I found it difficult to keep them straight, since the author was often very casual regarding who was speaking about or with whom: Malcolm Irvine is the mixed race scion of a well-todo east coast family; JB (Jean Baptiste) Marion is black and gay, an aspiring artist; Willem Ragnarsson is the budding actor in the group who arrived at the college from Wyoming, and now works in New York at the requisite waiter job and goes to auditions. He has left behind the memory of his deceased, severely disabled older brother to whom he was very devoted, and emotionally distant Scandinavian-born parents. Finally, there is the enigmatic law student Jude St. Francis, arguably the most intelligent and talented of the group, but someone who has a deeply mysterious, murky past. Jude suffers serious, recurring problems with his legs, which he attributes to a car accident, and has never let his friends see him without a shirt.

As the book proceeds and the years roll on, more characters are introduced, including Jude’s law professor Harold Stein, with whom Jude develops an extremely close relationship, and who, eventually, with his wife Julia, adopts Jude at the age of 30. Another significant character is the young doctor Andy Contractor, who is the first to realize the extent of the physical and psychological damage that has been done to Jude, and even he does not know the full story of Jude’s past.

Although the four principal characters – JB, Malcolm, Willem and Jude— provide the continuity for the book, it is, finally, Jude’s truly disturbing and almost incomprehensible life to which the author pays the most attention. Indeed, the last half or so of the book delves in great depth into the scarring, both physical and emotional, that has left Jude as guarded and impenetrable as he is. The passages in which we discover the characters and events to which Yanagihara has been alluding since the start are so harrowing, and so disturbing, that I think many (including myself) would rather skim through them than endure reading about Jude’s pain. These sections occur sporadically throughout the novel, and are recounted in more or less chronological order, beginning with Jude’s stay as an abused child in a western monastery, continuing into his years spent on the run with lapsed monk and pedophile Brother Luke, followed by his time at an orphanage which was no better, and likely worse, than his monastery sojourn. In his final trial by fire, at age 15 he spends 12 weeks with the cruel and sadistic Dr. Traylor, culminating in the car “accident” which eventually leads to his salvation and new life at the college, thanks to the intervention of kindly social worker, Ana.

If the book can be said to have a theme beyond the obvious- that of the transcendent power of friendship- it is the indomitable nature of the human spirit, and the incredible lengths to which a sufferer, in this case Jude, will go to survive and keep his secrets from emerging. Another theme, one which only takes centre stage in the second half of the novel, is the redemptive power of love to alleviate even the most profound suffering.

I picked up— and put down —this book several times before my sister and daughter-in-law both said that, although it was hard to get into, it was definitely worth a read. My sister found it very reminiscent of Mary Mccarthy’s 1991 bestselling novel about eight Vassar College grads, The Group. Of course, I did finally persevere and made my way through this marathon read, pausing only occasionally to rest and hydrate. Yanagihara’s skills in limning the inner life of the unfortunate Jude and the emotional impact of his past are impressive. Did this require 814 pages? No. Especially toward the end, I was beginning to tire of her repetitiveness, in particular regarding Jude and Willem’s unending apologies to each other.

I also found it both surprising and unfortunate that two of the four major characters, Malcolm and JB, are left in the dust and become mere supporting actors, as the novel concentrates almost exclusively on the later lives and relationship of Jude and Willem. Another annoying feature of the book was the almost complete disregard for the few female characters who are sparsely included in the narrative. They struck me as little more than extras in this male-centred cast of thousands.

While reading, I kept remembering previous “epic” i.e. epically long, novels I’d read in the past, such as Gone with the Wind and anything by James Michener, in which the time investment paid off with heightened perspectives and general knowledge gained. I also wondered why Yanagihara’s editor had not curbed her tendency toward lengthiness: a mere 500 pages would likely have been sufficient to tell this story.

PS, I am donating this book to the Lennoxville Library for any hardy souls who love a lengthy, but generally well-written tome, with the caveat: this is NOT a beach read!