From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara

Start date: July 1, 2016

Finish date: July 31, 2016

Discussion: New Book Group Read

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Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 5 topics — 461 comments total

New Book Group Read

* New Book Read - July 2016 - A Little Life
By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 95 posts · 41 views

last updated Sep 21, 2016 07:37AM

New Book Read - February 2016 - Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War
By Sera · 93 posts · 39 views

last updated Nov 13, 2016 12:01PM

showing 10 of 19 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Feb 18, 2023 Henk rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 2023-priority-list

Cried at the play in London today, Hanya, what do you do to us?!? 😭🥺😩
Rips your heart out, multiple times. Clinical, cutting analyses of people being limited, failing, but mostly living on, aspiring regardless.
There seemed to be an inevitability to this, to his life, that every year he would become worse, more disgusting, more depraved.
Every year his right to humanness diminished, every year he became less and less of a person.

The Early Years
You often hear of books being heartbreaking, emotional, ...more

137 likes · Like · see review

Dec 23, 2015 Irene rated it really liked it

This is an emotionally saturated novel about the power and limitations of love. At over 700 pages, it is not easy to summarize this story of destructive and nurturing relationships in a concise fashion. I understand why this novel has received such favorable reactions. It offers characters so amazingly caring and supportive, a central character so broken but so beautiful despite that, lives so blessed with success, fame, wealth and friendship that a reader may wish to linger in their company far ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Jan 20, 2016 Lise Petrauskas marked it as to-read

Shelves: aint-that-america, 21st-century-fiction

I've heard that membership in a support group is necessary/automatically granted to read/while reading this book. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Oct 06, 2019 El added it · review of another edition

Rating and review to come.

4 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2024 Lauren rated it it was ok

Manipulative, excessive, contrived, with cartoonish bad guys and cartoonish good guys. Events take place in a time vacuum. The four roommates are not just successful with their careers, they are all, like, the best at their chosen professions. Not all truck drivers are monsters. I’ve seen others describe this book as torture porn or misery porn, and I agree. I had another book by this author in my TBR and I have since removed it.

1 like · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2025 Pamela rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club

Having read so many conflicting reviews since this book came out, I didn’t know what to expect. In fact, I liked it more than I’d feared but not as much as the rave reviews suggested. I did find it melodramatic and sometimes unconvincing, and I wish the author had trusted her readers more to use their imaginations and interpret events, rather than trying to crush them with the full weight of lengthy descriptions of abuse and brutality. However, there were some very moving and perceptive moments ...more

Like · see review