"What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier."
A recent book I completed was A Little Life—a novel that came out in 2015, gained immense critical and popular attention, both praise and criticism, and was later adapted into a play. I have since then wanted to put my thoughts into words. Here is a humble attempt at that.
"You don’t visit the lost; you visit the people who search for the lost."
The book begins with four characters—four friends in a shared apartment on Lispenard Street, whose lives have been intertwined since college. What unfurls is not just a story, but a life—so fragile and bruised that at some point, you may find yourself wanting to fight the author, to protect the characters not from an external villain, but from themselves.
The book has a non-linear narrative with jumps in timelines happening all around but in no way does it hamper the storyline, it instead makes it extremely interesting and a very grappling read. Hana Yanagihara (the author) paints scenes without initially naming characters, compelling the reader to piece together identities and the reader- almost in a frenzy tries to read as much as possible in order to connect the dots and uncover the truth. This task, rather than made irritating for the reader has been very carefully spaced throughout the novel, so instead of feeling frustrated at some point, the reader feels responsible for figuring out the character mentioned, in a veiled manner with utmost sincereity and urgency.
Yanagihara handles time playfully- the flashbacks, fractured memories, and layered pasts flow seamlessly into the present. The resulting structure is not just unique, but haunting. The intentional disorientation of timelines and intersecting stories makes the reader more involved in the book. What results of such an unorthodox writing style is a gripping plot- well, not even a plot that one might see coming. And what it unearths is profoundly human.
I don't think that the writer overextends the portrayal of suffering, instead she creates whitespaces for the reader to fill in- things that cannot be spoken of.
Yanagihara has said that A Little Life was the book she had been trying not to write her whole life. She described it as already existing, waiting to be transcribed. She envisioned it as an ombré cloth—beginning light blue and ending a deep indigo. When constructing Jude’s story, she had in mind this picture of a very light blue that shaded to a very dark indigo. which indeed reflects in Jude's descriptions throughout the book.
The book starts with portraying Jude almost as a background character- somebody who would rather seep into the darkness and blur himself out rather than emerge at the surface as a prominent figure. But the novel takes a turn and starts revolving around Jude, but that does not mean that things start to look good for him, the readers instead find Jude questioning himself and life in general. He is of the opinion that maybe, happiness is simply not meant for him. With each passing year of his life, the events that have occured led him to believe that hummanness is something that he does not deserves.
Survival quietly stretches into prolonged suffering in certain lives- is one of the most subtle and devastating nuances Yanagihara offers us. In Jude’s case, survival is not a triumph—it becomes a slow, relentless state of endurance. His life stops being his own in many ways; it begins to orbit around the people who love him, around their desperate hope that their presence might redeem his past. This, too, is a kind of tragedy—the way a person, in surviving, begins to live not for themselves but for the sake of others’ love, others’ belief, others’ grief. There is something profoundly human in this—the tension between wanting to spare others pain and the unbearable weight of continuing for their sake. Jude does not seek attention or pity. Instead, his suffering becomes a silent, permanent background hum to his existence—so familiar that it feels inevitable. Yanagihara does not dramatize this; she lets it unfold with a quiet brutality that makes it all the more poignant.
For me, the protagonist is not just Jude, but in equal parts- Willem, JB, Malcom (the other three friends) and most importantly, Harold and Julia (Jude's adoptive parents)- the people who quietly shape the novel- appear when they must and as unnoticingly receed into the background but with a carfeul gaze, always on the outlook to support whenever needed, but not smother. They embody the kind of steadfast, unobtrusive support we all hope to have.
Personally, I suspected early on that Jude would die. That intuition was confirmed when the first mention of the excruciating pain exhalted by Jude's own body on him was mentioned, I knew that the book would end in him dying- of his own accord. The book spirals around this knowledge, but it never simplifies it. However, as I progressed with the book, there were so many instances where love and presence come so close to eradicating the loneliness that Jude feels- in almost an overwhelming manner, but then the world is again, very quietly destroyed that it almost feels like coming home- as in the events were supposed to occur that way and they indeed would and there is nothing one can do about it. And yet, just as the reader begins to hope, the world collapses again—inevitably, almost naturally. The novel teaches you to expect this, to brace for impact.
There have been several instances throughout the book when my heart went out specifically to Jude, Willem, or Harold and I found myself sighing over what I have read- from helplessnes and from a sense of conviction that it was bound to happen- the world in the book (as it in reality does too) is created and destroyed over and over again. Rebuilt everytime with a new and fresh hope, however the destruction does not seem to break one either- it instead offers a quiet shoulder to lean on.
The cycles of destruction do not necessarily devastate; rather, they offer a strange kind of comfort. As Adrienne Rich once wrote: "There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors." This is what Yanagihara offers her reader: a space to sit, weep, and survive.
"Every year, his right to humanness diminished."
The central theme, I believe, is not just trauma or survival, but the quiet, liminal space between life and death—what it means to live without ever truly feeling alive. For Jude, survival was rarely living. The living between life and death was often- if not always, a haze for him. The moments of kindness and compassion offered to him made him overwhelmingly grateful for his life- appearing as undeserved gifts, as though life were apologizing for all it had done to him. His life, which had been so unkind to him throughout that it is presenting him with a gift of compassion and love and camaraderie as a way of making up for its deeds in the past. But here is where the problem lies- the past is never the past for him. He always lives in it- almost constantly.
In the latter half of the novel his past and the three characters whom he remembers as life's protrayal of angelic, yet diabolical characteristsics- both personified, left an indelible mark on his life- Brother Luke, Dr. Traylor and Caleb. He remembers them not because they were the only ones who had been unkind to him but because they were the ones who had been kind but had used him- to an extent which made him believe that humanity is not something he deserves.
The novel also explores love, friendship, shame, identity, and the terrifying fragility of self-worth. Love is not enough—Yanagihara makes this painfully clear. And healing is not always possible. Jude's death becomes something the reader, heartbreakingly, begins to wish for—not because he deserves to die, but because he does not deserve to suffer any longer.
At times, Jude’s self-harm becomes a habit more than an act of acute pain. But he cannot stop—because he was taught early on that harming himself was how to process feeling. The novel never excuses this, but it does explain it, and the reader watches helplessly as Jude spirals again and again.
The novel breaks convention by constructing a character who never "gets better." A Little Life from the get go was suppsoed to break the norms- to follow a reverse path, where Jude and the plot itself begins healthy (or at least appears to) and ends sick.
It is a portrait of loneliness—not isolation in the absence of people, but the deeper solitude of being surrounded and still untouched. Yanagihara describes the invisible line we draw between the desire not to be alone and the fear of letting others in. Jude walks that line his entire life.
Towards the end, Harold becomes the reader’s stand-in. He tries to keep Jude alive—through logic, guilt, love, even pleading. And yet, he must live with the unbearable knowledge that he cannot rescue someone who does not want to stay.
"You pounce upon the happy moments... you hold them up as proof... See? This is why it's worth living."
After Willem's death, Jude never made promises for the future- he did not wish to disappoint anyone as he felt his last breaths approaching- his patience with life breaking apart.
Harold eventually understands that keeping Jude alive was his own need, his own selfish desire. And Jude dies believing he is alone, surrounded by love but unable to feel it. That grief does not end with Jude’s death. It lives on in Harold, in Julia, in everyone who tried to hold him.
In its final moments, the novel leaves us with questions not only about Jude but about ourselves:
"Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better?"
In the play adaptation of the book, the directors made a striking choice: the same actor played the three characters who returned as hyenas in Jude’s memories. It is a chilling personification of how trauma collapses identities and blurs past and present.
A Little Life is not only a chronicle of Jude’s pain, but also of Harold’s and Willem’s—the pain of loving someone you cannot save. The book captures the quiet grief of walking beside someone you love, knowing they are slipping away.
A Little Life does not leave you. It lingers like an ache, like a bruise you can’t locate but feel every time you move. It does not offer healing in the traditional sense. It simply asks: What does it mean to keep living, even when life no longer makes sense?
Every quote included here is drawn from the pages of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life itself.