Dear Great Book Guru,
This Friday, March 25 at 10:30am in Spooky Park, Mike and Gwynn Lennon will be hosting their
21st Annual Egg Hunt. Afterwards I will
be meeting up with friends to celebrate Daniel DiPietro’s birthday and I would love to have a
thought-provoking book to discuss. Egg Hunter Extraordinaire
Dear Egg Hunter Extraordinaire, I just finished a very interesting but
troubling book: A LITTLE LIFE by -Hanya Yanagihara. I couldn’t decide whether it was a moral
fable, a Dickensian melodrama, or a serious study of human suffering…. but
definitely a very disturbing read. Four young men meet in a small, elite
college, form a deep friendship, and move to New York City where most of the
story takes place. The thirty year time
span is hard to place but probably mid- twentieth century to the present. All four achieve fairytale successes in their
careers: prominent attorney, celebrated actor, renowned artist,
awarding-winning architect. While we
learn much about all four, it is the physically and emotionally scarred Jude who
remains center stage throughout. The
author’s description of luxurious
apartments, manor homes, travels abroad, drivers, servants, fine restaurant
dining, beautiful clothes- all fueled by
an endless supply of money and well-connected caring friends- imbues the novel
with a sense of magical realism. Nominated for both the National Book Award and
the Booker Prize, this book has many fans and equally as many detractors. I am
not sure which camp I would put myself in, but it is surely thought-provoking.