Reviews with content warning for Outing - A Little Life

I'm furious. The craft of this book was so excellent, asides from what I would say amount to some planning and character writing issues that begin about the final quarter of the book, that it bothers me immensely that every lesson in the book emanates such a pessimism, that they all amount essentially to a bleak miserable world that does not do much to fight Jude's contention that his life is not worth living. Around the point in the book where I began to think, wow, Yanagihara really understands that the only way to really go on living is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, she created a false world in which it was impossible to allow oneself that relief,

and concluded a story which purports essentially that the people around Jude should have let him go, as a man only fifty, because his life was so hard

. To treat such violence as inevitable is to put that violence into the world. This book is beautiful and miserly and irresponsible. I hated giving it a rating for this purpose.

Content Warnings

violetbentbackwards1036's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

fiifarts's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It took me so long to read this because of its reputation of being devastatingly sad and yuuUuup it was definitely that. but it was also really beautiful

Content Warnings

becphe's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Devastating and so good. The characters rich and complicated. The relationships felt genuine.

Content Warnings

angielivesandbreathes's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

smacey's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Okay... Where the hell to start?

*TW: suicide, rape, death, strong language - throughout entire review, but if you read the book you probably know to expect that*

In a nutshell, this book is a train wreck. It is beyond dismal and depressing, it is full of unrelenting and unending trauma, and it is a completely unrealistic and inaccurate portrayal of mental health and trauma response. Hanya Yanagihara writing this book and putting it out into the world with her skewed, disgusting version of what it means to be suicidal and to self-harm is utterly irresponsible and just plain fucked up.

Now, let's start with the few positives I was able to take from this work. Yanagihara is an incredible writer and has an undeniable skill for creating vivid depictions and imagery. One of the things that kept me going was how much I enjoyed the way she writes. She has fully fleshed out and realized characters, which I appreciate... And that's where the positives end for me. (I originally had given this book 2 stars, but, after writing this review, what Yanagihara did with this book is truly unforgivable to me and I have reduced my rating to 1 star.)

Let's move on to what's important here. Hanya Yanagihara took Jude and dumped trauma after trauma on him and didn't stop. She gives him "The Happy Years", although included in that time is the amputation of his legs (??? real happy), and then she ends those years in the worst possible way - by killing off the only person (minus Harold) who showed him completely unconditional love (minus the one weird instance where Willem was hurting him and ripped off all his clothes in the bathtub while Jude begged him to stop and said, “that anyone watching them would think this was a rape” Okay… (p. 598)). And in the most meaningless way, too. You're going to run a truck into Willem's car, oh, and kill off Malcolm and his wife too? Why? For what? If you ever wanted to read a story that just simply says "life doesn't ever get better and when it does, just wait, it’s going to get even worse than it ever was and you may as well die!” this is it.

Jude’s early life included being raped and battered too many times to count, emotionally and physically abused by the vast majority of the people who have been a part of his life, run over by a car and left with a physical disability that there is no cure for, literally kidnapped and locked in a basement… he has had his entire childhood taken from him, and he didn't have parents until he was, what, 30? All that said, he experiences what is known as dissociation twice that I can recall, despite dissociation being a common trauma response. He has some other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), like sensitivity to physical touch, unwanted memories, avoidance, and nightmares, but he otherwise lives his life normally, and by that I mean these symptoms apparently don't affect his time as a student or as a lawyer or anything in his life other than romantic relationships (he has a shit ton of friends at the time we read about him so clearly most interpersonal relationships are unaffected). PTSD can often be debilitating for people and interfere with most aspects of their lives - especially when it's as severe as what his is said to be. That doesn’t just go away while you’re at work or school, and it often has effects on relationships with those around you (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/box/part1_ch3.box16/).

Going off that, the fact that Andy tells Willem that Jude is not mentally ill absolutely made me lose it. First of all, why is Andy treating Jude for everything? I mean, I understand that Jude doesn’t trust people, and Andy is one of the only ones who knows so much about Jude… That being said, Andy is not specialized in psychiatry or psychology. What makes him think he can determine whether Jude has a mental illness or not? If he’s going to be his only doctor, why is he not consulting with psychologists and psychiatrists? Why is he not having him committed despite the fact that he comes in with multiple self-harm wounds every time he sees him? Why does he literally do nothing and then have the gall to say this when Willem asks him if Jude is mentally ill:

“There’s a very long silence, until Andy says, ‘I don’t think so, Willem. Or rather: I don’t think there’s anything chemically wrong with him. I think his craziness is all man-made.’ He is silent. ‘Make him talk to you, Willem,’ he says. ‘If he talks to you, I think you’ll - I think you’ll understand why he is the way he is.’” (p. 604)

I think this part of the book pissed me off more than any other. “Man-made” mental illness is still a mental illness, and it’s often in the form of PTSD. Andy does not know what he’s talking about, and should have brought somebody else on to help. Andy is not a good doctor, no matter how much Hanya wants you to believe he is. This is just one part of how systems failed Jude (which could have been a highlight in this book to make it more meaningful, but of course that was not the case).

Jude also somehow is extremely intelligent despite being taught by a Catholic Monastery who spend most of their time beating and raping him, then being taught by one specific predatory man, Brother Luke, who continuously rapes him and sets him up with "clients" to be raped by, then being sent to an orphanage where he was again consistently raped by the counselors, and then running away and being homeless and receiving no education at all... All of this, yet he receives a FULL RIDE SCHOLARSHIP to a prestigious school. Like I mentioned before, trauma and PTSD interfere with your life when it is this severe. This is so fucking unrealistic, and it is so frustrating, especially considering his physical illness he has on top of all of the mental scars. Yet, he is an amazing student, faces no problems, and becomes an extremely successful lawyer. Yea, okay.

Now, when I read the acknowledgements at the end, I became absolutely furious. Yanagihara thanks people “for their expertise on matters of architecture, law, medicine, and filmmaking…”. You’ll notice no mention of anyone helping her on matters of trauma, psychology, or mental health. That’s because she didn’t have any help, and there lies the issue. She wanted her characters’ careers to make sense with the real world, yet didn’t take the time or energy to research how to portray mental illness through a realistic lens? And then I looked up interviews of hers, one in which she said this absolutely horrific, infuriating statement:

“One of the things I wanted to do with this book is create a character who never gets better. And, relatedly, to explore this idea that there is a level of trauma from which a person simply can’t recover. I do believe that really, we can sustain only a finite amount of suffering. That amount varies from person to person and is different, sometimes wildly so, in nature; what might destroy one person may not another. So much of this book is about Jude’s hopefulness, his attempt to heal himself, and I hope that the narrative’s momentum and suspense comes from the reader’s growing recognition — and Jude’s — that he’s too damaged to ever truly be repaired, and that there’s a single inevitable ending for him.

This book is, obviously, a psychological book, but not one about psychology. I didn’t use psychological language, and I didn’t want to — nor encourage the reader to — diagnose Jude in clinical terms. As for the limits of therapy: I can’t speak to them, only that therapy, like any medical treatment, is finite in its ability to save and correct. I think of psychology the way I think of religion: a school of belief or thought that offers many, many people solace and answers; an invention that defines the way we view our fellow man and how we create social infrastructure; one that has inspired some of our greatest works of art and philosophy. But I don’t believe in it — talk therapy, I should specify — myself. One of the things that makes me most suspicious about the field is its insistence that life is always the answer. Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life (that doesn’t mean every doctor will help you get there, of course. But almost every doctor of the critically sick understands the patient’s right to refuse treatment, to choose death over life). But psychology, and psychiatry, insists that life is the meaning of life, so to speak; that if one can’t be repaired, one can at least find a way to stay alive, to keep growing older.

Obviously, this is reductive, and many, many people think otherwise, including my own dearest friend. He argues that therapy shouldn’t be indicted as a dishonest profession simply because therapists won’t tell patients they can kill themselves. And that the therapist’s role is to make one’s life better, at least in some measure, through self-examination. But I’m not convinced. However: maybe there is in fact a therapist or psychiatrist out there, who thinks that life is, for some people, simply too difficult to keep pursuing; who will give a suicidal patient permission, as it were, to die.” (https://electricliterature.com/a-stubborn-lack-of-redemption-an-interview-with-hanya-yanagihara-author-of-a-little-life/)

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Comparing psychology to religion, as if psychology isn’t a real science. Telling people that talk therapy doesn’t work and that some people can’t overcome trauma and should just fucking kill themselves. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not. It is not a doctor’s job to say, “Well, clearly your emotions are too heavy and you’re never going to get past this, so I give you permission to off yourself.” Does that sound ethical to anyone??? Because it’s fucking not. Plus, it’s just not the truth. Also, comparing it to medical doctors who help prepare patients for death due to terminal illness is an absolute disgrace. While mental health and physical health are both extremely important factors to living a healthy, long life, they cannot be treated the same: there are different medical and health specialties for a reason, and that is because they require different forms of treatment. Not having a cure for stage IV lung cancer and someone having “too much trauma” is not comparable, and you should not expect the same outcome in each case.

Putting this book into the world and telling people that suicide is inevitable for some people no matter how hard you try or how much help you receive is a disgusting, irresponsible thing to do, and I am appalled by Hanya Yanagihara. This book is completely irredeemable and unforgivable to me.

In addition to all of this bullshit, Yanagihara also manages to portray the gay community in an unrealistic light, showing none of the adverse experiences they face (besides Willem fearing he’ll be pigeon-holed into always playing a gay character, which, in comparison to the other struggles that the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who are not so privileged (such as the characters at the beginning of the story…) are practically nothing) and in a way implying that when a boy is sexually assaulted by a man, he will the be gay. Additionally, Jude starting that relationship with Caleb makes no real sense to me for his character, and neither was him cutting JB completely out of his life for years. Honestly, this book was just all around horrible. I admire Yanagihara’s skill of writing, but I despise her harmful views on a subject she clearly has never taken the type to critically research or learn about. I do not and would not recommend this book to anyone.

Content Warnings

fkshg8465's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

OMG. I wished so much for this book to go on and on forever, because I think it’s pretty obvious how it will eventually end, and I desperately wanted it to keep going - for him to keep going - for me to keep going. I felt like there were parts of the protagonist that were mirrors of how I feel about me some days, and I really needed him to save me. Be forewarned. Tons of triggers. Blown away by this book.

Content Warnings

seapotatohowisitalrtaken's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Content Warnings

More...