Cover of the novel A Little Life

I’ve just finished reading this wonderfull, albeit at times very depressing, novel. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, as my wife handed me another book to read back in September. She hadn’t read it either, so I was going in totally blind.

I didn’t do any research into what the book was about either, and I won’t be going into too much detail here either, other to say that it really was something quite different. It’s probably the only book that has made me cry, that I can think of. It also made me laugh and smile at others. It really was a rollercoaster ride of emotions!

It was also quite long at over 700 pages of reasonably small print. I have read some long books before (Le Mis) but not a modern time novel.

A short plot summary from Wikipedia with no plot spoilers:

Set primarily in New York City, the story chronicles the lives of four friends as they grapple with substance abuse, sexual assault and depression.

Having researched a little more following finishing this, I learnt that it’s sold over a million copies (that’s a lot of books). It was then written as a stage play a number of times. The 2003

This is one of the only books I thought deserved a longer post, as it truely enamoured me. I can certainly see it being analysed in English Lit classes worldwide, if not being done so already. It’s a bit of a slow burn to start out with but it really draws you in and once you’re a 1/4 of the way in you really need to keep on going. The writing style and brilliance required to build up such detail about so many characters is impressive. Like any good film, you may have to read it more than once to pick up all the detail. but I might advise that you give it a while inbetween reads…

Noteably this was my 10th book read this year, and with being quite busy with house/car(s)/family/jobs and life, I was quite pleased with. I had set a 10 book challenge on Goodreads after reducing that number from the following two years, so was pleased I had made that 🙂