A Little Life is curiously free of temporal context markers. We know that the characters live sometime in the modern world, but normal things we might expect to influence a New York City story—September 11, the AIDS crisis, stock market fluctuations—are notably absent. In your opinion, does this approach add to or detract from the story? Why?

A Little Life is an extremely male-focused story. While Jude has a few female friends and an adoptive mother, these characters are not developed at all. The one female character we see interact with Jude extensively, Ana, dies soon after she is introduced. Imagine that one of the female characters in the story is a more significant character, maybe even one whose inner life the author shows like those of Jude, Willem, and Harold. How would this perspective change the tone of the novel?

Which elements of the story seemed most unrealistic to you? Did these unrealistic elements bother you? Why or why not?