A Little Life

11 August, 2015
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Genre: Fiction
Category: New Books

Bookseller Karin Scherer says: 'I have read this book (mostly over the last weekend when I had very little sleep) which I will urge everyone to read. It is a huge commitment but I loved every word of every line of every page of all 720 pages. It is the most heart-breaking, gut-wrenching book I have ever read and it will stay with me forever. It is very upsetting and at times I found it difficult to breathe – I would not recommend to read it in public. The author (and this is her second book) is an editor at large at Conde Nast in the US. It is on the Man Booker Longlist and I hope with all my heart that it will win.'

More about this book:

A novel about brotherly love and the limits of human endurance. When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome - but that will define his life forever.