It has been very hard for me to write about A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara ( Double Day, Picador), because everything that reaches the heart and touches it is always difficult to convey, to transmit and to express. For the same reasons, it has also been very difficult for me to publish this review: I first read this book years ago, in the summer of 2017,  and later I re-read it and worked on it for the 2023–2024 Reading Club “Cadascuna de Nosaltres II”, which I directed at the Tecla Sala Public Library in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, where I decided to include it as part of the programme. However, it wasn’t until May 2025 that I finally had the strength to write this review for you, and today, in September 2025, I have decided to share it with you—not because the book has become a best-seller, far from it, but because it is a book I never hesitate to recommend and, moreover, it sits firmly among the Top Ten of my personal library.

Sorrow brings you down, sorrow drags you along, sorrow presses its finger into the most hidden wound of the heart, sorrow drowns you in emotion, but it also changes you, transforms you, makes you see life differently from how you saw it before all that sorrow, and it sets you moving in a direction entirely different from the one you had followed until then. A Little Life is a book that speaks of sorrow, of friendship, of love and heartbreak, of the eternal hope of a better future in life, but also of a reality so profoundly sad and fragmented that this longed-for future, for all its promise of happiness, never truly arrives.

It is not an easy book. It is a novel for which you need to be emotionally strong. Prepared. If you are sad, melancholic, weak, vulnerable, depressed, I would not recommend it. If you are going through personal hardship or an deep period of grief, it is better to leave it for later, for when you no longer remember quite so vividly all that sorrow and sadness. Remember that, for better or worse, everything passes in this life. But if you are well, and you feel the desire to connect with the most sincere humanity and the most vital, visceral and intimate feelings of the human condition, then go ahead.

Yanagihara has received some criticism for the plot of the story, accused of being implausible because of all the terrible things that befall the central character, Jude, but I believe that, as human beings, we must reflect that, however much our own lives may not have been as difficult as that of the character, this does not mean that there have not been lives burdened with such misfortune, or even that there has not been a life marked by even greater suffering than Jude’s. Without belittling anyone’s difficulties, I believe A Little Life resonates with those who have truly felt, at some point, that their world was breaking apart in their hands as Jude’s did, and who nevertheless were able to overcome all that pain, to recover from those deeply wounding hardships, and to be emotionally solid once again. I think that only if you have, at some point in your life, been in contact with a similarly painful circumstance to that which the character endures, can you truly open yourself to and understand this reading for what it is: a tremendous, intense and unforgettable experience.

It is not a book that destroys, but it does move and stir your emotions profoundly. It hurts to read it. And yet, one of the things I most admire—as a reader and as a writer—is Yanagihara’s ability to awaken such a radical emotion in the one who reads. If your empathy is developed, I am certain you will connect with Jude’s story from the very first moment, a story that remains alive across more than eight hundred pages, seducing you to keep reading even when the narrated pain becomes unbearable for the reader.

Yanagihara also manages to write with absolute narrative beauty. She captures human tragedy with brutal and striking force. For me, what the author achieves is an epic gesture: to write this story with such emotional density is a courageous and memorable act, worthy of admiration from all her contemporary women writers.

Ever since I first read A Little Life in 2017, I have always recommended it. Even, as I mentioned at the beginning, I included it as a reading choice in the Second Edition of the Reading Club “Cadascuna de Nosaltres”, which I directed for the Tecla Sala Public Library in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona). And I did so for many reasons, just to name a few: for the beauty of its narrative, for its honest portrayal of sorrow and the hardships that accompany human tragedy, for its excellent narrative rhythm, for the way it reflects the weight of friendship in a life marked by suffering, for how trauma itself becomes another character, for the way the protagonist’s resilience becomes extenuating, and for the delicacy and exemplary respect with which sexual identity is treated.

This book leaves its mark. There is a before and an after to this book. And perhaps the deepest impression it leaves is the idea that in this life it is possible to love even with an open wound pierced through by pain. There will be moments when you will want to abandon it because you cannot bear so much tragedy, so much suffering, but Yanagihara’s narrative talent draws you back into the reading, and you end up immersed in the life of Jude and his friends, trapped without remedy.

It is also a book I recommend reading in complete silence, without anyone interrupting you. As one reads important books, the good ones, the difficult ones, those that steal our time not to waste it, but to savour it and to delight in it. As the best readers do with the best books.

And when you close it, you cannot help but say:

—Why did I not read you before?