I got my tubes tied last fall, at age 45. . ... After 33 years or so, I struggled to gain control of my reproductive potential and its power over my destiny. Finally, instead of letting nature continue to screw around with me, at least in this one area I engineered a pre-emptive strike.

The bright side of life's unpredictability is that it's not over until it's over. As dark as the passages and confusing as the cul-de-sacs that you find yourself in are, progress is nevertheless being made. Something is unfolding. You are becoming.

Yanagihara's most impressive trick is the way she glides from scenes filled with those terrifying hyenas to moments of epiphany. 'Wasn't it a miracle to have survived the unsurvivable? Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely? Wasn't this house, this beauty, this comfort, this life a miracle?' A Little Life devotes itself to answering those questions, and is, in its own dark way, a miracle.

I got my tubes tied last fall, at age 45. . ... After 33 years or so, I struggled to gain control of my reproductive potential and its power over my destiny. Finally, instead of letting nature continue to screw around with me, at least in this one area I engineered a pre-emptive strike.