RaveThe Los Angeles TimesThe term ‘falls in love,’ I realize, is not quite right. ‘Becomes sexually obsessed’ is more accurate. Yet what happens between Elio and Oliver seems to fit neither category precisely, though sexual obsession certainly figures in, as does a kind of transforming symbiotic affection. The novel is really about lust – specifically the hyper-lust of an imaginative and questing 17-year-old – the kind that can make one want to lose oneself in a lover. In the complicated gyrations of flirtation that precede seduction, Aciman mines his story for deeper revelations about longing and identity … Gradually, in scenes infused with the languor and sensuousness of the novel's Mediterranean setting, Oliver and Elio consummate their attraction. It gives away nothing to reveal this, because from the beginning, the reader understands this will happen. The tension in the story is in the pursuit, not the eventual conquest.
Hanya Yanagihara
MixedThe Los Angeles Review of Books\"...the novel feels rather claustrophobic for all its length. There is no context other than the one created by these men’s lives and their relationships. One might be forgiven for thinking there was no homelessness in New York, no poverty or crime, no political shenanigans or artistic failures, only successes and rather pampered lives, the taste of uni to be discovered in a Soho restaurant, paintings to be admired at openings — and of course all the bloody scenes of cutting and rape. Past horrors drive the story forward even as the present becomes ever more dreamy. And yet this insularity works in terms of achieving the author’s stated goal of drawing us into the singular realm of the emotional lives of these men. Reading A Little Life is indeed an immersive experience ... it falls apart at the end: the only thing surprising about the tragic conclusion is it took so long to get there. Still I read it compulsively, often moved by its grave intelligence and storytelling power.\
Jean Stein
PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesStein's method is to construct a narrative entirely from oral interviews, an approach that lends the book a kind of Rashomon quality: The subjects are viewed from various angles by those who either knew them intimately or are well equipped to comment on their lives. It's like being at an insider's cocktail party where the most delicious gossip about the rich and powerful is being dished by smart people, such as Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, Arthur Miller and Dennis Hopper. The result is a mesmerizing book.
