Excerpts-

• From the cover 1
  
  The eleventh apartment had only one closet, but it did have a sliding glass door that opened onto a small balcony, from which he could see a man sitting across the way, outdoors in only a T-shirt and shorts even though it was October, smoking. Willem held up a hand in greeting to him, but the man didn’t wave back.
  
  In the bedroom, Jude was accordioning the closet door, opening and shutting it, when Willem came in. “There’s only one closet,” he said.
  
  “That’s okay,” Willem said. “I have nothing to put in it anyway.”
  
  “Neither do I.” They smiled at each other. The agent from the building wandered in after them. “We’ll take it,” Jude told her.
  
  But back at the agent’s office, they were told they couldn’t rent the apartment after all. “Why not?” Jude asked her.
  
  “You don’t make enough to cover six months’ rent, and you don’t have anything in savings,” said the agent, suddenly terse. She had checked their credit and their bank accounts and had at last realized that there was something amiss about two men in their twenties who were not a couple and yet were trying to rent a one-bedroom apartment on a dull (but still expensive) stretch of Twenty-fifth Street. “Do you have anyone who can sign on as your guarantor? A boss? Parents?”
  
  “Our parents are dead,” said Willem, swiftly.
  
  The agent sighed. “Then I suggest you lower your expectations. No one who manages a well-run building is going to rent to candidates with your financial profile.” And then she stood, with an air of finality, and looked pointedly at the door.
  
  When they told JB and Malcolm this, however, they made it into a comedy: the apartment floor became tattooed with mouse droppings, the man across the way had almost exposed himself, the agent was upset because she had been flirting with Willem and he hadn’t reciprocated.
  
  “Who wants to live on Twenty-fifth and Second anyway,” asked JB. They were at Pho Viet Huong in Chinatown, where they met twice a month for dinner. Pho Viet Huong wasn’t very good—the pho was curiously sugary, the lime juice was soapy, and at least one of them got sick after every meal—but they kept coming, both out of habit and necessity. You could get a bowl of soup or a sandwich at Pho Viet Huong for five dollars, or you could get an entrée, which were eight to ten dollars but much larger, so you could save half of it for the next day or for a snack later that night. Only Malcolm never ate the whole of his entrée and never saved the other half either, and when he was finished eating, he put his plate in the center of the table so Willem and JB—who were always hungry—could eat the rest.
  
  “Of course we don’t want to live at Twenty-fifth and Second, JB,” said Willem, patiently, “but we don’t really have a choice. We don’t have any money, remember?”
  
  “I don’t understand why you don’t stay where you are,” said Malcolm, who was now pushing his mushrooms and tofu—he always ordered the same dish: oyster mushrooms and braised tofu in a treacly brown sauce—around his plate, as Willem and JB eyed it.
  
  “Well, I can’t,” Willem said. “Remember?” He had to have explained this to Malcolm a dozen times in the last three months. “Merritt’s boyfriend’s moving in, so I have to move out.”
  
  “But why do you have to move out?”
  
  “Because it’s Merritt’s name on the lease,...

Reviews-

• Oliver Wyman delivers an amazing performance of Hanya Yanagihara's [THE PEOPLE IN THE TREES] disturbing new novel. Short-listed for the Mann Booker Prize, A LITTLE LIFE centers on longtime friends Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and JB. Jude, whose unspeakable childhood abuses contribute to his self-destructive tendencies, is the pivotal figure. He's beautiful and brilliant, and the others circle him as moths to the flame. Willem is a struggling white actor, JB is an African-American painter with a sharp tongue, Malcolm is an unfulfilled biracial architect, and Jude's race is undetermined. We follow the friends from college into their 50s, and Wyman's subtle vocal changes reflect their disenchantments as they age. Thanks to Wyman's sensitivity, this introspective examination of male friendship, race, sexuality, and love truly resonates. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
• 

  November 17, 2014
  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.

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