This is a truly great book, and you can tell it will be great just within the first few sentences. The pacing is amazing. The writing is amazing. All I really wanted to do for days was read this book. And that’s what I feel like I did more than anything else this past week.
A Little Life is a big book about four friends from college that soon reveals it’s star, Jude, and his primary relationships with Harold, a former professor who adopts him as an adult, and with another one of the four guys with whom he is closest to, Willem. The other two guys, JB and Malcolm, are also around, but Jude is especially important, with all his trauma and pain and shame. And so it’s a sad book. Sad for Jude for everything he goes through, but hopeful throughout the story that companionship may help keep things together.
Best line: “His work (at a standstill), his love life (nonexistant), his sexuality (unresolved), his future (uncertain).”
-Rachel Wagner 2021
Rachel Wagner 
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[…] down so apologetically like omg no and I’m so sorry for what I did to you. And in the novel A Little Life the main character, Jude, is tortured by so many people in his life and his luck seems to be that […]
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[…] Feared and hatred, fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he possessed. Fear of everyone else; hatred of himself. –Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life […]
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[…] Just finished A Little Life […]
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[…] I do scroll less when I am reading a book that’s easy to pick up. A Little Life was like that. Felt like you could just start reading any […]
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