Hanya Yanagihara, author of the acclaimed Man Booker prize-nominated, million-copies-and-counting A Little Life, has been working for years on a screen adaptation. It should be the ultimate box set: epic, engrossing, “right up against the line of melodrama”, as she once described her intention. Yet it has been “pretty much rejected by everyone”, the author said in an interview at the weekend.
Is it because she wanted too much editorial control, she wonders. Or because studios were looking for something more Sex and the City? If you have read it, you will be reeling, of course, at the ridiculousness: who would ever want to take control away from Yanagihara? I would put her in charge of everything. And how on earth could you Sex and the City-fy A Little Life? It would be like trying to make Titus Andronicus more like Friends. If you haven’t read it, I can’t tell you what it’s about, unfortunately: it sounds too harrowing, too much. And if that put you off, I would have ripped 10 or 15 hours of pure pleasure out of your hands for no good reason.
