A Little Life by Hana Yanagihara

FRIDAY FAVOURITE

What is there to say about this book that hasn’t been said? I was *sure* we’d had it up on the grid before now and even after checking with Chaya that it hadn’t been featured, I still combed back through our site because I was certain we’d discussed it. But no, it’s never had its own review.

But as I mentioned, so much has already been talked about — magnificent but divisive, a supreme writing talent but text so triggering you might not be able to see it through, too much, too raw, too challenging or just too damn beautiful. 

It is all of those things and then some more; I read it so long ago, a soon battered hardback that I carried with me like an extra limb on the tube every day to work (this paperback is my dad’s — thanks Dad!) and when I think about it, it’s not so much the events of this epic that I look back to. It’s how it made me feel — because amidst the friendship, the history, the trauma — I felt above all that I was surely reading an author with a talent so limitless, it seemed almost historic. That I was reading a book my kids would read one day and who knows, maybe even theirs — the making of a classic before my eyes, as the words on the page swirled before them.

I hadn’t experienced writing that drew me in like this before, a kind of guttural pull that — yes, at times — made this a very tough read. But I was too invested to stop. And even now, however many years on, I still am invested. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that this will always remain a book that, for all of the difficulty it tackles, will always remain, an ultimate favourite.

~ Sophie

Wishing you all a lovely weekend ahead!