A review by nikkicruz_md
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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

4.5

4.5 ⭐️
You have no idea how much this book broke me.
The last few pages were written in a parent's perspective which made me bawl my eyes out.

Harold: "Do you think he was happy with me? Because he deserved happiness. We aren't guaranteed it, none of us are, but he deserved it."

I have been warned about this book countless of times but there's this enormously substantial weight of pain it could inflict no matter how well prepared you think you are - which I think very much resembles real life - there is no way you could have been really prepared for it.

As Jude strives to become selfless, he has become more and more selfish (I don't know if that makes sense?). I understand that he had been through a great deal of unimaginable suffering & exaggerated cruelty as a child but he had found the people who loved him, the people who cared for him deeply, who stood by him through the bad and the ugly; the people who wanted him to live and yet their love for him remained insufficient. His soul irreparably broken.


I thought that love from the people who matters would be enough for one to continue living but as it turns out, there are ugly experiences one could go through that would haunt them unrelentingly. Jude tried and no matter how much he tried to escape the horrors of his childhood, it still engulfed him.

I finished this book after 2 months because I had to stop at some point and recalibrate. Yanagihara's book is a chef's kiss 🤌🏽 albeit very long; he narrated it in a manner worthy of every word written on this literary masterpiece.