A Little Life – Tanya Yanagihara

Novel Conversation’s Book Club – April 2017 Book – A Little Life, by Tanya Yanagihara

Just read a very good book for the Sequim Library’s book club – A Novel Conversation. The book for April is “A Little Life”, by Hanya Yanagihara. She’s a terrific writer and has a way of engaging the reader right from the beginning. It’s a long book but don’t be put off by the number of pages – I simply don’t think the story could be told in a shorter volume! I won’t kid you though, it’s not what I’d call a fun read, although it will keep you glued page after page. It’s about sexual abuse and the lasting impacts on the abused person – Jude – and the people who love him. While I struggled with the obvious, the book provided a glimpse into how a person can identify so strongly with something so abhorrent, to a point that it’s always lurking in the shadows, even when he convinces himself that it’s not. It’s not just Jude’s story – there are many victims of abuse in the world, but obviously the focus is on Jude. Well worth the time to read, if for nothing else, than to gain a little understanding of a subject so dark that many of us would prefer to remain clueless. For more information, see attached link.