A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

Picador/Macmillan

Otago Daily Times , September 19th 2015

Contrary to the brevity suggested by its title, Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel, A Little Life, is a physically and emotionally formidable read. It is also one of those rare and precious books in which it is possible to completely lose oneself.

The opening section introduces us to four college friends whose relationship will, despite their differences, endure a lifetime. Egotistical, hedonistic artist JB is the group’s social centre, and is certain that the arrival of fame and fortune is just a matter of time. The cautious Malcolm, who still lives with his mixed-race parents and is the only one of the quartet with money, despairs of ever being imaginative enough to be anything more than architectural draughtsman. Willem, son of immigrant northwestern ranch hands, is an aspiring actor whose kindness and charisma make him the natural peacekeeper. And then there is Jude St. Francis, whose life before college is a mystery and who guards his privacy with an intensity that everybody, even the self-centred JB, has learned to respect.    

At first the narrative is split relatively equally between each of them as they find their feet in New York and establish themselves in their chosen professions. But as the novel progresses the focus shifts more and more towards Jude, slowly revealing a childhood that has left him so physically and psychologically damaged that the scars will never heal, and his ongoing struggle to escape that past.

Despite becoming a highly successful lawyer and surrounded by a steadfast group of friends who do everything they can to hold him together, Jude will always see himself as a thing of horror, a Frankenstein’s monster whose entire life is a camouflage that will one day be stripped from him along with everybody and everything he holds dear.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted; although the author spares us details of Jude’s sexual abuse, her graphic descriptions of the physical damage he endures, particularly the self-inflicted harm that is his only emotional outlet, are profoundly disturbing. I also struggled with other aspects of his self-destructiveness, particularly his constant attempts to sabotage his closest relationships before something else can, an instinct I identify with only too closely.

But it is also a profoundly touching story of friendship and the endurance of the human spirit that kept me enthralled throughout. And the brief interludes where Harold, Jude’s adoptive father, addresses the reader directly as one of the story’s own characters, actually moved me to tears.

A Little Life is competing with Anna Smaill’s marvellous The Chimes on the Mann-Booker long list and my loyalties are now split. In some ways, Yanagihara’s creation is summarised in Willard’s description of Jude: “Being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape…you think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes, and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map”… “So basically”, says Jude at last, “basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand”. How could I not be seduced?

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/touching-story-friendship-spirit