If you think you've read the story of four friends trying to make it in New York City already, think again. Hanya Yanagihara's transcendent second novel is much more than its plot summary suggests. A Little Life may be the best book you read this year; it certainly will be the most heartbreaking.

The Condé Nast Travel editor, who grew up in Honolulu, made her fiction debut in 2013 with the publication of The People in the Trees. She'd been working on that novel—which weighs a scientist's dubious morals against the good his research has accomplished—"for maybe 16 years," she says during a call to her office in New York City.

All 700-plus pages of A Little Life, on the other hand, were written in just 18 months, after five years of mental planning. "I worked on it very steadily, three hours a day Monday through Thursday and six hours a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But I knew where it was going the whole way."

That's an advantage the reader of this often-surprising literary tour de force won't have. As the stories of the four main characters—college roommates Willem, Jude, Malcolm and JB—unfurl over three decades, Yanagihara deftly fills in the separate pasts that have shaped their shared present.

"I was very drawn to the idea of a group of friends," Yanagihara explains. "My very best friend, to whom the book is dedicated, has a large group of friends who I call the herd of cats. They've known each other since high school and college, and I've always admired their dynamic and how hard they work at staying friends."

Like any friend group, the foursome faces ups and downs: romantic disappointments, career successes, drug addictions. Two go into professional careers—Jude becomes a lawyer and Malcolm, an architect—while JB and Willem pursue art and acting, respectively. But it soon becomes clear that the biggest conflict in A Little Life is Jude's struggle with his past demons, which include abandonment and abuse. While his entire history doesn't become clear until well into the book, readers will realize early on that it's not something to be easily overcome—giving a story that might otherwise be essentially a domestic one serious emotional heft, as well as a sharper, more dangerous edge.

"One of the themes of the book is this hope that we all live with: that one other person can save us—and the realization that we really can't be saved, that the idea of being saved itself is sort of a false conceit . . . "

"One of the themes of the book is this hope that we all live with: that one other person can save us—and the realization that we really can't be saved, that the idea of being saved itself is sort of a false conceit," Yanagihara says, citing the "limits of what any one person can do for someone else."

The reader does indeed feel helpless at times in the face of the cruelties that Jude endured. Yanagihara fully commits to bringing readers all the way into her characters' lives—the dark spots as well as the bright—with a visceral realism. "A friend of mine called it sort of an emotional horror story in a way, and I guess it is," she admits. (This interviewer read one scene peeking out between her fingers, which was a first.)

Child abuse is tricky to handle in fiction, but Yanagihara seems drawn to exploring the subject, which was also an element of The People in the Trees.

"I'm interested in how people compensate for some great harm when they were young," she explains. "One of the great concerns for fiction in general is the fundamental vulnerability of humans," adding that children represent the most vulnerable group of all.

But while Jude's trauma may give the book its drama, at its heart A Little Life is a study of friendship, a relationship that "can never really be codified," says Yanagihara. "With gay marriage, we are seeing a relationship that has always existed between two men or two women get a legal name. But friendship will never have a legal definition."

She was particularly interested in male friendship, because "men are friends in very different ways than women are friends. Socially—and not just in our society but almost every society—they're given a much smaller emotional toolbox to work with. They're not allowed to name, much less express, the sort of feelings that come very naturally and easily to women." (Originally, she'd intended to have no women in A Little Life, but decided it was "too contrived-sounding" and scrapped the idea.)

Yanagihara's grasp of the complexities of friendship is masterful and will spark recognition in any reader, male or female. You might say that this book is to friendship as The Corrections was to family.

"Although we have seen depictions of great friendships in books, I don't think it's something that as a society we collectively value as much as we should," she says.

The novel is carefully structured—something Yanagihara says "was as important to me as any of the flashier elements"—into seven sections. The first four are each set five years apart, but the final three sections run together, to echo the way that the experience of time changes througout life. "As you get older—I recently turned 40—time seems to shrink and compress, and it becomes something that is lived less by these sort of big epic milestones and simply by moments," says Yanagihara.

A Little Life takes place somewhere close to the current day, although the exact time is never specified. "I wanted the book to have a sort of fable-like quality to it," says Yanagihara.

Fable or not, New York City—currently Yanagihara's home base—is vibrantly depicted here, from crappy post-college apartments in Chinatown to the SoHo lofts that come with adult success. Also very New York: the way that each of the characters is driven to break from the past.

"Everyone here is sort of looking for another family . . . this idealized set of people who will understand them," she says.

Malcolm, Willem, JB and Jude find that set of people in each other, and readers of A Little Life will feel a part of it. With this epic and moving story, Yanagihara proves that she is a literary force to be reckoned with.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In his poignant, often funny memoir, Bettyville, George Hodgman, a gay writer and editor who once worked at Vanity Fair, tells the story of returning to his Midwestern hometown to live with his obstinate, elderly mother. Unemployed and tired of his solitary existence in New York City, Hodgman goes back to tiny Paris, Missouri (population 1,246), and takes up duties as caregiver to 90-year-old Betty, who can't be persuaded to move to an assisted-living facility. As he watches his mother decline, Hodgman takes stock of the past. His parents could never stomach his sexuality, and he grew up with feelings of inadequacy. Driven to compensate, he attained high-profile positions in the publishing world, but he also abused drugs and partied hard. For Hodgman, the return home represents a chance to make peace with the past. His portrait of Betty and his depictions of their life together are rendered with humor and tenderness. This is a beautifully written, timely memoir that will resonate with a wide range of readers.

FANTASTICAL WORLDS
It's been 10 years since Kelly Link released a collection of stories aimed at an adult audience. With Get in Trouble, she returns at the top of her form, offering nine transportive pieces of fiction that display her prodigious imaginative gifts. "The Summer People" is a haunting, atmospheric tale of a girl in small-town North Carolina who takes care of vacation homes, including a strange residence with otherworldly occupants. In "The New Boyfriend," a pampered teen's slumber party gets thrown off course when she receives an odd birthday gift: a very lifelike Ghost Boyfriend. "I Can See Right Through You" features a has-been actor who visits his former lover in the swamps of Florida, where she's filming a reality TV show about ghosts. Inspired by fairy tales and comic books, classic and contemporary myths, Link blends the surreal and the real to create narratives that are unforgettable—and unsettling. This is a rewarding book from one of the finest short-story writers working today. 

TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS
A finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, Hanya Yanagihara's second novel, A Little Life, is a masterfully crafted epic about the nature of ambition and the quest for contentment in modern-day America. At the story's center are four buddies who move to New York City after college to kick off their careers. There's Willem, an up-and-coming actor, good-hearted and good-looking; J.B., an enterprising painter from Brooklyn; Malcolm, a restless architect; and Jude, an introverted lawyer whose nightmarish past is key to the narrative. Yanagihara traces the men's lives over the course of three decades, dramatizing the twists and turns of their careers, their personal histories and complex relationships with compassion and a remarkable sense of intimacy. The four friends and their richly detailed experiences stay with the reader long after the novel's stirring finish.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Yanagihara follows her debut novel, The People in the Trees, with a deceptively simple tale of four male friends, Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and JB, who meet during their college years at Ivy League institutions. The men choose to continue their journeys into adulthood together by relocating jointly to New York. As they sustain their friendships into their fifties, the author delivers tales of their loyalty, love, and support for one another. However, lying beneath the surface is an emotionally disturbing story line about Jude, a highly successful lawyer and the brightest of the four men. The horrors of Jude's victimization during his youth by the brothers of a monastery and his eventual abduction by Brother Luke, a pedophile and pimp, force him to struggle relentlessly with inner demons and a deep-seated distrust of others, with his pain manifested in constant acts of cutting. VERDICT As in her previous novel, Yanagihara fearlessly broaches difficult topics while simultaneously creating an environment that her audience will find caring and sensitive. Not all readers will embrace this work, given its intense subject. However, for those strong of stomach or bold enough to follow the characters' road of friendship, this heartbreaking story certainly won't be easily forgotten.—Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Yanagihara follows her 2013 debut novel, The People in the Trees, with an epic American tragedy. The story begins with four college friends moving to New York City to begin their careers: architect Malcolm, artist JB, actor Willem, and lawyer Jude. Early on, their concerns are money and job related as they try to find footholds in their respective fields. Over the course of the book, which spans three decades, we witness their highs and lows as they face addiction, deception, and abuse, and their relationships falter and strengthen. The focus narrows as the story unspools—and really, this is Jude's story. Unlike his friends, who have largely ordinary lives, Jude has a horrific trauma in his past, and his inner demons are central to the story. Throughout the years, Jude struggles to keep his terrible childhood secret and to trust those who love him. He cuts himself and contemplates suicide, even as his career flourishes and his friends support him. This is a novel that values the everyday over the extraordinary, the push and pull of human relationships—and the book's effect is cumulative. There is real pleasure in following characters over such a long period, as they react to setbacks and successes, and, in some cases, change. By the time the characters reach their 50s and the story arrives at its moving conclusion, readers will be attached and find them very hard to forget. (Mar.)