Reviews with content warning for Car accident - A Little Life

A little life was unnecessarily, ruthlessly cruel. I hate this book for existing. For making me feel so helpless and disgusting, but I love it because no other book in this entire world could have made me feel the same sense of wonder and insignificance. No other book could have set such a clear vision of perspective in front of me. I haven't enough decision-making skills to coherently understand how exactly I feel about a little life yet. Maybe I will one day, but till then, I don't want to talk about it; I don't want to think about it.

This was my review of A Little Life when I read it for the first time a little over two years ago. Now I have a more coherent grasp of what exactly I feel about this book.

A Little Life starts off beautifully. It does a wonderful job of introducing the main characters to us in a natural yet informative way. We aren't overwhelmed with information all at once, and the author creates a deep sort of intimacy between the characters and the readers. But then, as we go more and more into the story, as we move on from JB's POV, Willem's POV, and Malcolm's POV, and enter Jude's POV, there begins the problem. The sheer amount of visceral abuse and torture that is in this book, and the graphic and unforgiving way it is broached, is absolutely ridiculous. It gets to the point where you start wondering what the point is. What was the point of writing about such disgusting and horrifying realities? What was the reason one specific character was subjected to that type of cruelty and so unrelentingly? Is it the romanticization of abuse? Is it the insensitive sense of entitlement authors often tend to have?

The more you read this book, the more you want to put it down, the more you dread having to pick it up again. It took me about six months to finish this book, and not because I forgot about it. On the contrary, I thought about A Little Life obsessively. It took me six months because of how much I didn’t want to see what happened next. You think it's over; you think, “No way it could get worse than this,” but then it does, and then your resolve crumbles.

After I finished this book, I took it upon myself to find out everything I could about it. I watched interview after interview of Hanya Yanigihara during promotions; I read every review and article I could find, all the ones that mattered; I delved deep into this story that was created until I figured out the central truth of it. And that is this. More than anything else, A Little Life is a fantasy book. It's fantastical and ludicrous, and not realistic whatsoever. It was written to be a hyperbole, an overstretch of all of life's truths. And once I realized this and accepted it, I found it possible to love A Little Life again.

So, would I recommend reading this book? Yes and no. It changed my life, and to this day, I haven't read anything to match it. But also, every single complaint and one-star review of this book has its merits. Take the time to look up the trigger warnings; don't worry, it doesn't make you a snowflake.

Content Warnings