Not For The Faint Of Heart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                        I enjoyed Hanya Yanagihara's earlier novel, "The People In The Trees," but I could have done without the doctor morphing into child abuse.

                                         Forget it.  "A Little Life" almost revels in every kind of human misery--abuse, torture, cutting, amputation, suicide--all perpetrated on one Jude St. Francis, whose life story would make Fantine's saga a fairy tale, and is the most upsetting chronicle I have read since Fantine, and "Sophie's Choice."

                                          What happens to Jude, from day one, is bad enough.  What's worse is that it never lets up; despite his managing to become a successful Manhattan lawyer, (a miracle he did not turn criminal or serial killer!) and is surrounded by love from college friends, and a Manhattan couple who eventually adopt him as their son, having lost their own, at the age of 5, Jude cannot seem to weather past his traumas, and, inevitably, they do him in.

                                             All in over 800 excruciating pages.  I am not going to say that Yanagihara is a bad writer; on the contrary she is not, but this book has no hope, just misery.  When I finished it, I covered myself in a blanket, stretched out on my couch, and went to sleep.  It completely drained me.

                                             If you seriously interested in literature, there is no way you cannot read it. But, remember, I warned you.  If you don't want to subject yourself to this experience, skip this, and go on to something fun, as did I, when this is complete.

                                            Believe me, darlings, "A Little Life" is not "A Little Night Music"--Mozart OR Sondheim!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!