Books like A Little Life

If A Little Life stayed with you, these share its feel: tenderness, friendship and defiance. Each comes with a real page, so you can tell in a minute.

About A Little Life · Hanya Yanagihara

1.The Secret History

Donna Tartt, 1992

Also melancholy and memory. A California scholarship boy is taken up by a circle of Greek students at an elite Vermont college — and by the thing they have done. A novel about beauty, envy and the cost of belonging.

DOES SUCH a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

Excerpt from The Secret History, Donna Tartt, Vintage 1992. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
2.Normal People

Sally Rooney, 2018

Also memory. Two teenagers who ignore each other in public begin a secret intimacy that follows them through school and university, where class and misreading keep reshaping love.

Everyone is so convinced of his attraction to Miss Neary that sometimes he starts to doubt his own instincts about it. What if, at some level above or below his own perception, he does actually desire her? He doesn’t even really know what desire is supposed to feel like. Any time he has had sex in real life, he has found it so stressful as to be largely unpleasant, leading him to suspect that there’s something wrong with him, that he’s unable to be intimate with women, that he’s somehow developmentally impaired. He lies there afterward and thinks: I hated that so much that I feel sick. Is that just the way he is? Is the nausea he feels when Miss Neary leans over his desk actually his way of experiencing a sexual thrill? How would he know?

Excerpt from Normal People, Sally Rooney, Crown 2018. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
3.A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini, 2007

Also melancholy. Two Afghan women, a generation apart, are thrown together by war and a violent marriage—and discover what loyalty can be built from ruin.

It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid. And Mariam was afraid.

Excerpt from A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini, Penguin 2007. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
4.Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck, 1937

Also tenderness and friendship. Two migrant workers drift through Depression-era California, trading a shared dream of a small farm against the cost of staying together.

They come, an’ they quit an’ go on; an’ every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.

Excerpt from Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, Vicens Vives 1937. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
5.Charlotte's Web

E. B. White, 1952

Also tenderness and friendship. A pig, a spider, and a barnyard full of voices: a children's book about friendship, words, and the saving grace of ordinary attention.

It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.

Excerpt from Charlotte's Web, E. B. White, HarperCollins 1952. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
6.Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

J. K. Rowling, 2007

Also friendship. A fugitive year spent hunting the pieces of a divided soul, while the wizarding world chooses sides and every friendship is tested.

Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same; Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends...friends...friends...friends... Harry felt a great rush of affection for Luna.

Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling, Pottermore Publishing 2007. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
7.The Book Thief

Markus Zusak, 2005

Also tenderness and defiance. A girl steals books in Nazi Germany while Death, tired and curious, narrates her story. A voice-driven novel about words, courage, and ordinary people.
8.Curtain

Agatha Christie, 1975

Also melancholy and friendship. An ageing Poirot returns to Styles, the scene of his first case, to hunt a murderer who leaves no trace and seems always one step ahead.
9.Stoner

John Williams, 1965

Also melancholy and tenderness. A farm boy becomes a literature professor in Missouri and learns what a quiet life can hold and cost.
10.Hearts in Atlantis

Stephen King, 1999

Also memory and time. Stephen King's most personal book: a boy in 1960 Connecticut, a late-night card game in a Maine dorm, and the long bill for the sixties.
11.The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Mitch Albom, 2003

Also tenderness and melancholy. Eddie dies at the amusement park where he worked, then meets five strangers who show how his ordinary life touched other people's. A short book about unremarkable lives.
12.Yol

Cormac McCarthy, 2006

Also tenderness. A father and his son walk south through a burned America, carrying a pistol and a fire that has to mean something. Spare, terrifying, tender.