When a book leaves you breathless – A Little Life

To begin, there is nothing little about this book. It comes in at 720 pages and the story,
characters and horrors are each enormous. When the tome was placed in my hands by a
colleague at the end of the school year last June, I was warned that it is “not an easy book to read.”

Well, that was an understatement.

Since I devoted my summer to Richard Russo and his North Bath trilogy, as well as whatever
fluff I picked up along my travels, I didn’t begin Hanya Yanaguhara’s A Little Life until late in August. My initial attempt was unsuccessful, probably a combination of vacation brain (i.e. afternoon spritzes and subsequent napping) and my struggle to understand who the narrator was and remember which of the four most central characters was relating the story.

After my return from the Cape, I began the book again in earnest and, within 40 pages or so, I was hooked – I couldn’t put it down. I found myself reading it when I was stopped for red lights and when I woke in the middle of the night, often I reached for it. It’s one of those books that I know is going to stay with me for a long time, despite there being parts that I hope to never think about ever again.

A Little Life is a very difficult book to read. There’s abuse that is relentless and graphic in an absolutely stomach churning way. Yet, it is so gorgeously written that, although there were parts that I could only skim, I was compelled to read it to its realistic and heart-rending conclusion.

As I read, I found myself reaching for a pencil, wishing I could underline specific passages and sentences. If I owned a copy of A Little Life, I would have opted for a pen, in fact, for this
statement:

“…but he was old enough now to know that within every relationship was something unfulfilled and disappointing, something that had to be sought elsewhere.”

This realization, expressed by a character deeply in love, resonated with me in a profound way. As I’ve grown older. I’ve had that very same understanding. Expecting an individual to meet and satisfy one’s every wish or desire is something reserved for the young and naive. Recognizing this fact, to me, is an indication of adulthood.

I’m at a place in my life where thoughts of what my “legacy” will be, after I’m gone, sometimes skitter through my brain and reading the sentence below consoled me.

“I know my life’s meaningful because…because I’m a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and I think I make them happy.”

Add to that I’ve done my best to raise sons who also embody that sentence, a fact which most certainly provides a sense of worth and satisfaction to me. Devoting time and energy to considering my lasting impact on the universe is not something I do frequently. Maybe because of fact, I can closely relate to one character who muses:

“It had always seemed to him a very plush kind of problem, a privilege, really, to consider
whether life was meaningful or not.”

This observation, again, rang a chord for me:

“We are so old, we have become young again…”

Haven’t you ever considered how we enter the world unable to walk or talk, completely
dependent upon others for our needs and that, often, prior to when we depart life, we find
ourselves in that very same condition? I know I have.

Returning A Little Life to its owner might just be as difficult as it was to read it. The gorgeously tragic story that Hanya Yanagihara spun, however, will remain with me, I suspect, forever. What a magnificent work. Read it.*

*It looks like a film version is being released in the UK soon. Hopefully it will soon also be available in the U.S., and since it clocks in at 3:40, let’s cross our fingers (or else our legs!) that there will be an intermission during the eventual screening.