A Little Life

A Little Life is a 2015 novel by American writer Hanya Yanagihara. The book was written over the course of eighteen months.[1] Despite the length and difficult subject matter, it became a critically acclaimed bestseller.[2]

A Little Life
U.S. first edition cover
AuthorHanya Yanagihara
Cover artistPeter Hujar (photo)
Cardon Webb (design)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
March 10th, 2015
Pages814
ISBN0-385-53925-8
813/.6
LC ClassPS3625.A674 L58 2015

Structure

A Little Life is divided into seven parts and follows a chronological narrative with flashbacks frequently interspersed throughout. The novel's narrative perspectives shift throughout the story's progression. During the beginning of the novel, a third-person omniscient perspective privileging the thoughts of Jude, Willem, JB, or Malcolm is employed.

I: Lispenard Street

II: The Postman

III: Vanities

IV: The Axiom of Equality

V: The Happy Years

VI: Dear Comrade

VII: Lispenard Street

As the story gradually shifts its focus towards Jude, its perspective progressively molds entirely around each character's interactions with Jude and the experiences of Jude himself. This literary perspective is punctuated by first-person narratives told by an older Harold, nine years in the future.

Plot summary

The novel focuses on the lives of four friends: Jude St. Francis, a disabled genius with a mysterious past; Willem Ragnarsson, a kind, handsome man who aspires to be an actor; Malcolm Irvine, an architect working at a prestigious firm; and Jean-Baptiste "JB" Marion, a quick-witted painter who wants to make a name in the art world. The novel's main focus is the enigmatic lawyer, Jude. The book follows their relationships changing under the influence of success, wealth, addiction, and pride.

I: Lispenard Street

The story opens with an introduction of Lispenard Street, where Jude and Willem reside in an apartment together. The narrator notes Jude's walking difficulties and chronic mind-numbing pain (which radiates from his spine to his feet). Jude has severe depression, anxiety, and extreme mental trauma from his childhood and copes with it by resorting to self-harm. It is heavily implied that he has been doing this for quite some time. However, one such bout of Jude's cutting leading to Willem's needing to take him to Andy Contractor, Jude's doctor and trusted friend. As the novel progresses, the reader is given insight into the individual lives of Willem, JB, and Malcolm, which sets up how and why the characters interact with each other the way they do. Willem came from the rural life and was estranged from his family until both parents passed away while he was in college. Malcolm, who still lives with his parents, yearns for the independence that his friends have aside from the wealthy class that he was born into. JB frequents his mother's home and focuses his implacable self-loathing on breaking into the art world.

Throughout college and even well after college, the four continue to spend time together frequently and it is demonstrated how extremely close they all are in varying degrees of friendship. There is a clear understanding that they equally care and love each other and it is suggested that they only have each other, but despite this apparent closeness with his friends, Jude finds himself unable to divulge either detail of his past or current state of mind to his companions.

II: The Postman & III: Vanities

Jude purses a successful career in law working at the US Attorney's office. A new narrative is introduced in the form of flashbacks and he thinks back to Ana, his first and only social worker. Jude is reliving the memories after his accident when he was in the hospital at 16 and is encouraged by her to go to college and make something of himself. Jude slowly heals from his injuries and gets closer to Ana, who pushes him to open up more and speak about what happened, he is subjected to more suffering when she suddenly falls ill and passes away from her sickness. This pushes him to move forward and succeed in getting into the college that eventually leads him to meeting Willem, JB, and Malcolm. During his years at Law School, Jude captures the attention of his professor, Harold Stein and develops a close parent-child relationship with him and his wife Julia. Throughout the years of him and Harold getting closer, Jude is still reluctant to reveal his history to him. It is implied that during one of his visits with Andy, that his injuries will never fully heal due to the extent of them, for which Jude shows heavy frustration with his lack of progress. This leads to another bout of him cutting.

These feelings brings Jude back to when he was first found as an infant by the monks and was raised in a monastery where he was abused physically, mentally, and sexually by all of them. One of the monks, Brother Luke had taken a special interest in Jude and was the only one who never hurt Jude, which resulted in him working frequently in the greenhouse with Luke, for which he believes was the beginning of the end of his life. As Jude and his friends spend more and more time with Harold and Julia, taking vacations together, the pair decide to adopt Jude when he turns thirty. While thankful, the time before the adoption is filled with further bouts of self-harm, as Jude believes he is inherently unworthy of affection. Meanwhile, the rest of the group finds success in their respective fields, with Willem becoming a star of theater and then film, Malcolm working for a world-renowned architect firm, and JB finding success as an artist but also becomes addicted to crystal meth that was encouraged by one of his many lovers, who intentionally tries to isolate him from the rest of the group. The group stages an intervention, where JB mocks Jude by doing a crude imitation of his limp. In spite of successful treatment, and a great deal of apologizing, Jude finds it impossible to forgive JB. Willem refuses to forgive him too, causing the group to fragment, with only Malcolm remaining friends with all four members.

IV: The Axiom of Equality & V: The Happy Years

Jude's friends and loved ones begin questioning his isolation as he enters his forties, with Willem especially being baffled with regard to Jude's sexuality. At this point, Jude and Willem are closer than ever, but Jude is still reluctant to share his insecurities of being unloveable and fundamentally being a bad person. Willem departs in order to begin filming a new movie which results in him being gone months and leaving Jude alone once more. As his loneliness grows more intense, he enters an abusive relationship with fashion executive Caleb. As weeks go by, Caleb is repulsed by Jude's disability and frequently shares his disgust when Jude increases the use of his wheelchair. As the verbal abuse intensifies, Caleb begins to beat him. Jude does not disclose this to Andy who questions where the bruising is coming from. As Jude's disability worsens, his fear of Caleb overshadows his need for the wheelchair and he endures the suffering not only from Caleb but his legs as well. Jude finally breaks off the relationship after Caleb rapes him, and they meet a final time when Caleb follows him to dinner with Harold, humiliates him, and then follows Jude to his apartment, where he brutally beats and rapes him, leaving him for dead.

Switching to Harold's perspective, he reflects on his son Jacob, from a previous relationship years ago, who began to show symptoms of illness at age four and it progressing rapidly, claiming the boy's life only a year after his symptoms started. Harold, extremely frustrated and challenged by his lack of knowledge about Jude, blames himself for not being able to help Jude and decides to go to Greene Street, where Jude has been for the past few years since taking a new job at a private firm and lives comfortably, and he finds to his horror Jude beaten to a pulp. He takes him quickly to Andy, who is also horrified by the extent of his injuries. Harold chose to take off work, in order to take care of Jude and clean up his apartment. He quickly finds one of Jude's bag of supplies used to cut himself and immediately throws it out. Harold reveals that he already knew of Jude's cutting, since years prior a bag of similar contents was found under the sink in Harold's guest bathroom, which Jude used when he would stay with them. Harold threw them out in anger but never revealed to Jude that he had found them and Jude would continuously replace the bag, which frustrated him because he knew that Jude would never cease his cutting. Jude nonetheless refuses to report the incident to the police, believing he deserved it. Besides Harold, only Andy knows the truth of the failed relationship.

As Jude is hospitalized, the pain makes him go back to when he was 9 years old and continuously grew closer with Brother Luke working in the Greenhouse. The abuse readily increased with the other monks. This later results in Brother Luke and Jude deciding to run away together at the behest of Luke as well as Jude's need to please him. Jude is then subjected to sex work while also being molested by Luke which furthers his shame and guilt for loving Brother Luke. Jude then begins the beginning stages of his self-harm by throwing himself into walls or down the stairs. Luke, realizing this, introduces Jude to cutting in order to lessen the impact of his self-inflicted injuries. After years of child prostitution, Jude, aged 12, finally finds solace when the motel he is in is raided by the police, but as Luke realized what was happening, he hangs himself in the bathroom.

Months after Caleb, Willem, who thinks Jude was in a car accident since Jude forced Harold to lie to him about the origins of his injuries, suspects something else happened to Jude while he was gone. Once more Willem leaves to film another movie, which further isolates Jude, who is still dealing with the trauma from the ordeal, and he finally decides to kill himself but survives the attempt. In the aftermath, Willem comes back home and begins to live with him. Jude continues to refuse therapy but begins to tell Willem the least traumatic stories about his childhood, which Willem finds disturbing and horrifying. As months pass, Willem begins to realize that he also has romantic feelings for Jude and confesses his love to him. Jude, reluctant at first, reciprocates the feelings and the two begin a relationship.

As Jude opens up more and more, he finally reveals to Willem who Caleb was and the true nature of why he was hospitalized. He and Willem begin to have sex, but Jude, who still has sexual trauma from his childhood, does not enjoy it. In order to cope with the feelings of displeasure and disgust, Jude increases his bouts of cutting but begins to worry what Willem would think of him if he found out how often he was doing it. In an attempt to curb his cutting, Jude decides to instead burn himself as a form of self-harm, but accidentally inflicts third-degree burns that require him going to Andy and needing a skin graft. The wound is so severe that Andy warns him he has to tell Willem what happened, or else he will do it for him. Before Jude can tell Willem, Andy accidentally divulges the information. Willem is horrified but, after a difficult fight, Jude finally confesses that he does not enjoy sex, and tells Willem about the years of sexual and physical abuse he endured.

After Jude was rescued, he was placed in Philadelphia state care where his torment did not end. He was continuously abused at the hands of the counselors. This lasted for another few years until he, one night, decided to run away. In order to make it to Boston, he hitchhiked and would perform sexual acts with men who would give him rides. One day, Jude fell sick and passed out while walking. He awakens to find himself in a car driven by man who is only referred to as Dr. Traylor. The man, at first, treats Jude for his illness which is implied to be a venereal disease but once cured of his ailment, Dr. Traylor begins to sexually abuse Jude. After about 3 months of living in his basement, Jude realizes that his 15th birthday has just passed and Dr. Traylor reluctantly decides to let him go under the condition that he does not stop running once let go. In an open field he lets Jude out and Jude begins to run while Dr. Traylor chases him with his car but Jude exhausted from the ordeal, collapses which leads to him being run over by the car and it is revealed the true origins of Jude's injuries.

The relationship continues, with Willem sleeping with women (and not with Jude) for a while, until he eventually stops, due to a sense of guilt and uneasiness. The two settle into a comfortable life together. Jude one day reads Caleb's obituary in the paper which leads to another instance of him cutting due to the feelings of shame and guilt being brought up, but he also begins to feel a sense of relief because he has also started therapy. Their comfort is shaken when Jude's legs become worse, and eventually he must amputate or risk losing his life. After some time, he manages to learn to walk again with his new prosthetics, and the pair enter a period of their life which Willem dubs "The Happy Years". However, while picking up Malcolm and his wife from the train station for a visit, Willem is involved in a car accident with a drunk driver.

VI: Dear Comrade & VII: Lispenard Street

6 months later, Jude is still grief-stricken from the sudden death of his lover and close friend. He decides in order to deal with the reality of never seeing Willem again, to avoid all of his movies. He also returns to work and begins to launch a series of lawsuits against everyone that was involved in the crash that claimed the lives of Willem, Malcolm, and Sophie. He falls back into his self-destructive habits and takes sleeping pills to sedate himself from the brutal reality of not being in the same world as his lover and best friend.

Jude is in fact relatively healthy even a year after the accident and still checks in with Andy, who has decided to retire, which leaves Jude feeling bitter and abandoned. Harold and Julia have decided to move to New York likely to keep an eye on Jude. Years earlier, he had promised Harold that he would not commit suicide but frequently thinks of ending his life. Within a few months, he begins to lose such an excessive amount of weight that his remaining loved ones stage an intervention. After being hospitalized, Jude, pushed by everyone especially Harold, begins to attend therapy again and finally open up about what happened to him and is able to gain back his weight successfully.

The narrative returns to Harold who is addressing Willem. He mentions that after a vacation with Jude and Julia, he still worried about Jude, who seemed withdrawn and moody, even though he was still attending therapy and maintaining his weight. After turning down a new job opportunity and vague mentions of traveling, years of depression and despair finally overtake Jude, and he ends his life. It is revealed in this narrative that it has already been 6 years since Jude had taken his life and Harold shares that many of Jude's friends had all died relatively young, except for JB, who was the only one of the four that was still alive. Harold still mourns for Jude and resents the fact that he nor anyone could have convinced Jude that he was a good person and worthy of love. He ends the novel by remembering back to before Jude had killed himself, when Jude and him had visited the old apartment on Lispenard Street and tells Harold a story of him, Willem, JB, and Malcolm.

Themes

Male relationships

A core focus of the novel is the evolution of the relationships between Jude, Willem, JB, Malcolm, and Jude's adoptive father Harold. Jude's life in particular is populated by men who love and care about him, as well as men that exploit and abuse him, and those who fall in the liminal spaces between the two categories. We see this directly from the moment that he follows Brother Luke into the greenhouse, as well as the moments in which he knew what he was doing in the motel rooms was wrong, but still had felt dedication and love for Luke since up until those moments in his life, he was the only person who was kind to him. The social and emotional lives of each male character are the fabric that weaves the novel together, creating an insular narrative bubble that provides few clues about the historical moment in which the story is situated.[3]

Yanagihara confines the reader's perspective and emphasizes the examination of the distinct interior lives of each character and the people that populate and influence their lives. There are few women dispersed throughout the story, as a result, the novel can be considered a rumination on the strengths and the limits of romantic love, friendship, and relationships among men.

Despite the various iterations of relationships and attempts to connect with Jude, his existence is often stagnated by isolation and loneliness in dealing with trauma and pain. His few attempts to reach out and connect with others during his adult life manifest in the repetition of yet another cycle of sexual abuse and trauma – his relationship with Caleb. The flashbacks to his abusive experiences with Dr. Traylor, Brother Luke, and boy's home counselors demonstrate the moral and affective extremes of abuse and exploitation that he experiences. Yet the novel invites juxtaposition by way of narration from Harold who shows a father's unconditional benevolent love to his adopted son.

"Meanwhile, the analysis conducted on Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is a dissertation by Edvinsson in 2019 which discuss the non-stereotypical masculinity of the main characters in the novel. Edvinsson (2019) uses the basis of gender stereotypes and Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity to analyze the masculinity of Yanagihara’s male characters in A Little Life. It is found that the characters in Yanagihara’s novel do not fit into the practices of hegemonic masculinity, as their masculinity is portrayed and combined with the so-called effeminacy and feminine traits, and therefore they are considered defying the typical gender roles the society legitimizes. Yanagihara’s male characters tend to have a wide range of characterization which makes them carry the complex view of masculinity which does not suit the idea of hegemonic masculinity. The findings also show that hegemonic masculinity on men can be constantly changing over time. In conclusion, this analysis has indicated that the male characters in Yanagihara’s A Little Life have the mixture of masculinity and femininity with some implying the stronger masculinity side and the other carrying the stronger femininity side in them (Edvinsson, 2019)." - Rasikhah, S. A. (2021). Male homosociality performed by the main male characters in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim).

Trauma, recovery, and support

In an article written for New York Magazine, Yanagihara states that "one of the things [she] wanted to do with this book was create a protagonist who never got better… [for him] to begin healthy (or appear so) and end sick – both the main character and the plot itself".[4] The first sixteen years of Jude's life, plagued by sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, continue to haunt him as he enters adulthood. His trauma directly affects his mental and physical health, relationships, beliefs, and the ways in which he navigates the world. He struggles to move beyond the damage the past has wrought upon his body and psyche.

Other than Ana, Jude's deceased case manager who predates the novel's beginning, and Willem later in the novel, he divulges almost none of his past to those close to him. The failure to understand Jude's trauma is a constant point of tension in the novel, as well as the subsequent frustration that stems from his inability to build mutual networks of support among his friends and family. Jude's friends, including Andy, are constantly plagued by doubts about the ethical choices such as allowing Jude to live independently while harboring the knowledge of his physically self-destructive behavior. Throughout the novel, Jude constantly apologizes for his actions and for the inability to take the help that would be given to him.

Writing in The New Yorker, Parul Sehgal called Jude "one of the most accursed characters to ever darken a page". She went on,

The story is built on the care and service that Jude elicits from a circle of supporters who fight to protect him from his self-destructive ways; truly, there are newborns envious of the devotion he inspires. The loyalty can be mortifying for the reader, who is conscripted to join in, as a witness to Jude's unending mortifications. Can we so easily invest in this walking chalk outline, this vivified DSM entry? With the trauma plot, the logic goes: evoke the wound and we will believe that a body, a person, has borne it. [5]

Chronic pain and disability

A Little Life depicts the everyday experience of living with trauma, chronic pain, and disability, demonstrating the inherent intersections with one another. As a direct result of Dr. Traylor running him over with a car, Jude's spinal injuries have long-term health effects that trouble him for the rest of his life. He is prone to episodes of intense pain due to severed nerves in his back, lesions forming on his legs, and has difficulty walking. His insistent inclination towards independence manifests in the ways he constantly resists and fights his body as it breaks down with age, despite numerous treatments and surgeries. Jude continually attempts to take control of his body and his emotions by self-harming. His life is structured around pain, and the anticipation of pain. As Jude grows older, he loathes the increasing dependence he must have on devices such as wheelchairs, canes, and on relying on the care of others.

Self-harm and suicide

There is evident self harm in the novel and Yanagihara does not shy away from the details of how Jude does it nor how he feels while doing so. Harold’s realization is excruciatingly painful, more so than the news that Jude has indeed finally succeeded in killing himself. Harold’s self-deception does not save him or Jude from pain; if anything, it adds to both their suffering." - Rushton, A. (2019). A Bubble in the Vein: Suicide, Community, and the Rejection of Neoliberalism in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows. In World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent (pp. 195-213). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Reception

Critical reception

A Little Life was met with widespread acclaim from critics. The novel received rave reviews from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications.[6][7][8][9][10] Review aggregator website Book Marks reported only three negative and three mixed reviews among 48 total – 33 critics gave the book a rave review, while the remaining nine expressed positive impressions.[11] In The Atlantic, Garth Greenwell suggested that A Little Life is "the long-awaited gay novel", as "it engages with aesthetic modes long coded as queer: melodrama, sentimental fiction, grand opera. By violating the canons of current literary taste, by embracing melodrama and exaggeration and sentiment, it can access emotional truth denied more modest means of expression".[12]

The New Yorker's Jon Michaud found A Little Life to be "a surprisingly subversive novel – one that uses the middle-class trappings of naturalistic fiction to deliver an unsettling meditation on sexual abuse, suffering, and the difficulties of recovery". He praised Yanagihara's rendering of Jude's abuse, saying it "never feels excessive or sensationalist. It is not included for shock value or titillation, as is sometimes the case in works of horror or crime fiction. Jude's suffering is so extensively documented because it is the foundation of his character". He concluded that the book "can also drive you mad, consume you, and take over your life. Like the axiom of equality, A Little Life feels elemental, irreducible – and, dark and disturbing though it is, there is beauty in it".[6]

In The Washington Post, Nicole Lee described Yanagihara's novel as "a witness to human suffering pushed to its limits, drawn in extraordinary detail by incantatory prose". She wrote that "through insightful detail and her decade-by-decade examination of these people's lives, Yanagihara has drawn a deeply realized character study that inspires as much as devastates. It's a life, just like everyone else's, but in Yanagihara's hands, it's also tender and large, affecting and transcendent; not a little life at all".[13]

Jeff Chu of Vox would "give A Little Life all of the awards". He said that no book he previously read had "captured as perfectly the inner life of someone hoarding the unwanted souvenirs of early trauma – the silence, the self-loathing, the chronic and aching pain" as this one, and found Yanagihara's prose to be "occasionally so stunning" that it would push him "back to the beginning of a paragraph for a second read". As he phrased it, "indeed, A Little Life may be the most beautiful, profoundly moving novel I've ever read. But I would never recommend it to anyone". Chu also said that Yanagihara's descriptions embodied his feelings, citing that "Jude's inability to address his wounds" compelled him to begin to address his own: "his struggle to find his peace emboldened me to try to find mine".[14]

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Sam Sacks called the story "an epic study of trauma and friendship, written with such intelligence and depth of perception that it will be one of the benchmarks against which all other novels that broach those subjects (and they are legion) will be measured". He said, "what's remarkable about this novel, and what sets it apart from so many books centered on damaged protagonists, is the poise and equanimity with which Ms. Yanagihara presents the most shocking aspects of Jude's life. There is empathy in the writing but no judgment, and Jude's suffering, though unfathomably extreme, is never used to extort a cheap emotional response".[7]

The Los Angeles Times's Steph Cha remarks that "A Little Life is not misery porn; if that's what you're looking for, you will be disappointed, denied catharsis. There are truths here that are almost too much to bear – that hope is a qualified thing, that even love, no matter how pure and freely given, is not always enough. This book made me realize how merciful most fiction really is, even at its darkest, and it's a testament to Yanagihara's ability that she can take such ugly material and make it beautiful".[10]

To NPR writer John Powers, A Little Life is "shot through with pain", but "far from being all dark"; in fact, it is "an unforgettable novel about the enduring grace of friendship", he concluded.[9] Similarly, in Bustle, Ilana Masad wrote that Yanagihara explored "just what the title implies", which is, "the little bits of the little lives, so big when looked at close up, of four characters who live together in college and keep alive their friendship for decades after", and dubbed the novel "a remarkable feat, far from little in size, but worth every single page".[15] In addition to being critically praised, the book is popular: as of October 2021, it had more than 295,000 ratings on Goodreads, with an average of 4.3 out of five.[16]

A notable negative opinion, however, appeared in The New York Review of Books. Daniel Mendelsohn sharply critiqued A Little Life for its technical execution, its depictions of violence, which he found ethically and aesthetically gratuitous, and its position with respect to the representation of queer life or issues by a presumed-heterosexual author.[17] Mendelsohn's review prompted a response from Gerald Howard, the book's editor, taking issue not with Mendelsohn's dislike of the book but "his implication that my author has somehow, to use his word, 'duped' readers into feeling the emotions of pity and terror and sadness and compassion", and his implication that the book only appeals to "college students and recent graduates who have been coddled by a permissive and endlessly solicitous university culture into 'see[ing] themselves not as agents in life but as potential victims'".[18]

Also, Christian Lorentzen, writing in the London Review of Books, referred to the main character's "gothic inverted fairytale origins" and "ghastly litany of childhood sexual abuse". The characters, he wrote, "seem like stereotypical middle-class strivers plucked out of 1950s cinema". He asked, in regard to JB, who becomes a crystal meth addict, "what real person trapped in this novel wouldn't become a drug addict?"[19] And The New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin said of the novel, "it might have had even more impact with fewer wild beasts prowling through fewer pages. But Ms. Yanagihara is still capable of introducing great shock value into her story to override its predictability. One major development here is gasp-inducingly unexpected, the stuff of life but also of melodrama. It may not lift the bleak mood, but it explains a lot about this voyeuristic book's popular success".[20]

Yanagihara appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to discuss the book.[21]

Awards and accolades

In July 2015, the novel was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize[22] and made the shortlist of six books in September 2015.[23] In 2019, A Little Life was ranked 96th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.[24]

Awards

Adaptations

The theatre company Toneelgroep Amsterdam debuted an adaptation of A Little Life on September 23rd, 2018, in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Ivo van Hove directed the adaptation, which had a run time of over four hours.[31] Van Hove collaborated with Yanagihara on the script after being given copies of the novel by two friends.[32] Ramsey Nasr played the lead Jude St. Francis in the adaptation, which received positive reviews. Theatre critic Matt Trueman wrote that, despite the play's sometime suffocating trauma and violence, it "is van Hove at his best, theatre that leaves an ineradicable mark."[33]

In August 2020, the theatre company Liver & Lung presented an unofficial musical adaptation of A Little Life in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.[34] Seven songs from the album were released on Spotify on January 7th, 2022, to celebrate the release of Yanagihara's new novel, To Paradise.[35]

References
  1. Yanagihara, Hanya (28 April 2015). "How I Wrote My Novel: Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life". Vulture.com. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  2. Maloney, Jennifer (3 September 2015). "How 'A Little Life' Became a Sleeper Hit". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  3. McCann, Sean (3 June 2016). "'I'm So Sorry': A Little Life and the Socialism of the Rich". Post45.org. Archived from the original on 2021-07-31. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  4. Yanagihara, Hanya. "How I Wrote My Novel: Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life". Vulture. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  5. Sehgal, Parul (January 3 and 10, 2022). "The Key to Me: Fiction writers love it. Filmmakers can't resist it. But the trauma plot is wearing thin." The New Yorker. Page 65.
  6. Michaud, Jon (28 April 2015). "The Subversive Brilliance of 'A Little Life'". The New Yorker.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. Sacks, Sam (6 March 2015). "Fiction Chronicle: Jude, the Obscure". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 17 July 2015.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. Anshaw, Carol (30 March 2015). "Hanya Yanagihara's 'A Little Life'". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  9. Powers, John (19 March 2015). "'A Little Life': An Unforgettable Novel About the Grace of Friendship". NPR. Archived from the original on 2015-03-20. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  10. Cha, Steph (19 March 2015). "'A Little Life': a darkly beautiful tale of love and friendship". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 18 July 2015.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. "A Little Life". Book Marks. Archived from the original on 2018-03-16. Retrieved 15 October 2021.
  12. Greenwell, Garth (31 May 2015). "A Little Life: The Great Gay Novel Might Be Here". The Atlantic.
  13. Lee, Nicole (2015-04-10). "Book review: 'A Little Life', by Hanya Yanagihara, inspires and devastates". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2021-11-01.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  14. Chu, Jeff (2015-10-14). "A Little Life is the best novel of the year. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone". Vox. Archived from the original on 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2021-11-01.
  15. Masad, Ilana (2015-03-10). "Hanya Yanagihara's 'A Little Life' Is Far From Little In Size, But It's Worth Every Single Page". Bustle. Archived from the original on 2015-03-13. Retrieved 2021-11-01.
  16. "A Little Life". Goodreads. 2021-10-31. Archived from the original on 2014-12-28.
  17. Mendelsohn, Daniel (3 December 2015). "A Striptease Among Pals". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  18. Howard, Gerald (17 December 2015). "Too Hard to Take". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 24 February 2016.
  19. Lorentzen, Christian (24 September 2015) "Sessions with a Poker". London Review of Books. Pages 32–33.
  20. Maslin, Janet (September 13, 2015) "Review: 'A Little Life,' Hanya Yanagihara's Traumatic Tale of Male Friendship." The New York Times. (Retrieved October 31, 2021.)
  21. Hollander, Sophia (16 July 2015). "Seth Meyers's 'Late Night' Literary Salon". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  22. "Man Booker Prize announces 2015 longlist". Archived from the original on 10 August 2015. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  23. "Pulitzer winner makes Booker Prize shortlist". BBC News. 15 September 2015. Retrieved 15 September 2015.
  24. "The 100 best books of the 21st century". The Guardian. 21 September 2019. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  25. "The Man Booker Prize 2015 | The Man Booker Prizes". themanbookerprize.com. Archived from the original on 2016-02-29. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
  26. "2015 National Book Awards". www.nationalbook.org. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
  27. "2015 Finalists: fiction | Kirkus Reviews". Kirkus Reviews. Archived from the original on 2018-07-06. Retrieved 2016-02-29.
  28. "2016 Carnegie Medals Shortlist Announced". American Libraries. October 19, 2015. Retrieved November 15, 2015.
  29. "2016 Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist Revealed". Women's Prize for Fiction. April 11, 2016.
  30. "The 2017 Shortlist". International Dublin Literary Award. 12 April 2017.
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