A Little Life

I intended to make a pilgrimage to Lispenard Street

where fictional characters Jude & Willem lived post college.

While running errands yesterday, I found myself on this corner and thought of their New Year's Eve party, and Jude backing cookies in the kitchen.

I reminisced as if I lived these moments.

Hanya Yanagihara's novel emotionally impacted me.

Months later I still think about the characters and the complicated lives they lived.

For many, the book is too long (720 pages), and relentlessly dark.

I was immediately hooked, read it in less than a week, and wept through most of it.
I loved it, and will most likely read it again.

“Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries,
 and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs.
 It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present
for another person’s most dismal moments,
and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”