Little Life

Literary fiction

First published: 2015
Print length: 736 pagesPan Macmillan, 2020

Description

Four friends arrive in New York City and pursue careers in law, acting, architecture, and art, but the novel gradually centers on Jude St. Francis, a brilliant lawyer living with disability, severe spinal pain, and psychological trauma rooted in childhood. Jude builds professional success and forms a close bond with his former professor Harold and Harold's wife, yet he conceals his self-harm and refuses to explain his past even to those closest to him. As addiction fractures the group and loneliness leaves Jude vulnerable to an abusive relationship, friendship becomes both a source of protection and a measure of what care cannot easily repair. The novel follows ambition, intimacy, and enduring trauma across lives bound together by loyalty, pride, and unequal knowledge.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct

Pace

Slow

Tone

Bleak · Dark · Earnest · Intimate

Structure

Nonlinear

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

AddictionFamilyFriendshipIsolationMental healthTrauma

About Hanya Yanagihara

Hanya Yanagihara is an American novelist, editor, and travel writer who grew up in Hawaii and has pursued fiction alongside her editorial career. Her novels move between intimate character studies and expansive historical or speculative designs, often examining how ambition and the desire for freedom are constrained by memory, institutions, family, and care. She also changes narrative form to suit those concerns: The People in the Trees filters a scientist’s prison memoir through a colleague’s destabilizing footnotes, A Little Life draws a circle of New York friends into the experience of disability, pain, and trauma, and To Paradise connects alternate versions of the city across three centuries. Her prose ranges from direct psychological description to dense, atmospheric, and essayistic narration.

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Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Language: English
ISBN: 9781529061246

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