One of the saddest books of the 21st century, but also one of the most compelling, A Little Life follows the lives of four friends living in New York, and paints a portrait of the intricacies of life, the moments that come to create meaning, and the tragedies that cast shadows on your joy.
When I finished this book I sobbed, and then I just felt numb. I mean, it goes without saying that this book is extremely sad. I had a conversation with one of my friends (who told me she wasn't going to read the book, so I could spoil it for her) where I summarized every bad thing that happened in Jude's life. Said like that, it's almost comedic in its tragedy (not really as you're reading it, but what I'm trying to say is how unbelievable some of these character's lives are).
It's an immense, sweeping character study that details the life and times of 4 friends living in New York City in an undefined time period. However, the book really only focuses on 2 out of the 4 friends, at least for most of the book. The other two are pretty much left neglected (I can barely remember anything meaningful about Malcolm other than he was an architect and was rich, and as for JB, all we learned about him was that he liked art, and could be kind of an ass).
The book chronicles their lives all the way from their 20s, struggling to pay bills and wondering if they're going to make it big, all the way to their 50s, successful and fulfilled--at least until another tragedy befalls them. The story mostly focuses on Jude as the central character. He remains mysterious and elusive for about half of the novel; a spectacle of questions and "what really happened to him in his past?" And then you find out, and it's pretty intense.
Because the book was set over so many years, it was a lot more telling than showing, but somehow I didn't mind. I loved seeing all the insignificant and significant events of these people's lives flowing across the pages, and learning how different events would build to other events. Even with the lack of "showing" it was still easy to feel connected to the characters; I easily forgot that they were characters on a page, which is what made the ending so difficult.
There were surprisingly a lot of moments of comedy in this book, at least in the beginning. I found myself laughing at some of JB's quips and the interactions between them. I really wish, however, that the friendship remained central to the novel throughout it, and that we would have delved more into the other character's thoughts, feelings, emotions. As I said, Malcolm and JB felt like they were barely involved (and I honestly liked JB, despite his obvious flaws; he added a lot of comedic relief).
Overall this book was fresh, it was heavily readable, it was immersive, it was tragic, it was incredible. However, I wish there was some more focus on the other characters' lives in the novel as well. Overall, I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.
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