A Little Life

Yanagihara wrote the most intense novel about trauma and male love of the last twenty years. Jude St. Francis is a character who destroys the reader in a way few books manage. Critics were divided over whether the accumulation of suffering is necessary or exploitative: a legitimate question each reader must answer for themselves. What is not debatable is the prose — beautiful and precise — or the power of the story. Not for everyone, but for those it works for, it is impossible to forget.