Literary fiction · Similar reads
Books like A Little Life
The best books like A Little Life are The Things They Carried, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and The Year of Magical Thinking. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is about trauma and its persistence, male friendship, survival and its costs. If that's what drew you in, here are 12 books that share its DNA — each summarized on Superbook, and ready to chat with in the app.
- The Things They Carried
01
Tim O'Brien · Memoir
Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
02
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers · Memoir
Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Year of Magical Thinking
03
Joan Didion · Memoir
Joan Didion's account of the year following the sudden death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, is the most rigorous and unflinching memoir of grief in American literature.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Grief Observed
- When Breath Becomes Air
05
Paul Kalanithi · Memoir
When Breath Becomes Air is Paul Kalanithi's account of his life before and after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at 36, while completing his residency in neurosurgery at Stanford.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - The Finkler Question
06
Howard Jacobson · Literary fiction
The Finkler Question opens with Julian Treslove, a failed actor turned celebrity lookalike, being mugged by a woman who he believes calls him a Jew as she flees.
Both dig into male friendship.
Read the summary → - A Farewell to Arms
07
Ernest Hemingway · Literary fiction
A Farewell to Arms is set during the First World War in northern Italy and follows Frederic Henry, an American serving as a lieutenant in the Italian ambulance corps, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Fine Balance
08
Rohinton Mistry · Literary fiction
A Fine Balance is set in an unnamed Indian city during Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975–1977, a period of suspended democracy, forced sterilization, and slum clearances that is barely taught in the West and barely taught in India.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
09
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · Literary fiction
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the intellectual and spiritual development of Stephen Dedalus from early childhood to the edge of adulthood, when he leaves Ireland to pursue life as an artist.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Thousand Acres
10
Jane Smiley · Literary fiction
A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a thousand-acre Iowa farm in the 1970s.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - A Visit from the Goon Squad
11
Jennifer Egan · Literary fiction
A Visit from the Goon Squad is a novel told in thirteen chapters, each from a different point of view and sometimes in a radically different form — including one chapter composed entirely as a PowerPoint presentation.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary → - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
12
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · Literary fiction
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where Tom Sawyer left off — Huck Finn, the outcast son of the town drunk, has been taken in and given a respectable life he doesn't want.
A kindred literary fiction read.
Read the summary →
Books like A Little Life: quick answers
What are the best books like A Little Life?
The best books like A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara are The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, plus 7 more below. Each was chosen for themes it shares with A Little Life, such as trauma and its persistence, male friendship, survival and its costs.
What should I read after A Little Life?
A natural next read after A Little Life is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. A kindred literary fiction read. Other strong choices are A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis.
What books are similar to A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara?
A Little Life centers on trauma and its persistence, male friendship, survival and its costs. Books with a similar feel include The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson — all free to read and chat with on Superbook.
