Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016 shortlist reviews

The Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2016 is awarded this week. Here's my take on the shortlist.

Book review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

If you go by social media, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life is either the most amazing, emotional, poignant book ever written, or it's an ill constructed, ridiculous, far too long brick, and there is no in between.

Well, I'm here to say that I'm the in between. There are moments of A Little Life I think are sheer genius, where the beauty of Yanagihara's prose can't be denied, and then there are moments where I think the book is just full of holes.

A Little Life follows four friends - Jude, Willem, JB and Malcolm - in New York after they graduate. The novel quickly focuses its beams on Jude, who is a powerful, brilliant lawyer, but who is deeply affected by an awful childhood which has left him scarred in numerous ways. As Jude grows older, he becomes more and more unable to let the demons of his past go.

Yanagihara's novel is billed as the tale of four men, but really it's not. We soon lose sight of JB and Malcolm (especially Malcolm), who then only pop up occasionally, and often to serve a particular plot point before disappearing. Willem, who is far closer to Jude, continues to play a significant part in the book and in Jude's life, but I expected to be reading a book exploring male friendship, and what I actually read was a book about one man and how he connects, or not, with the people in his life.