A review by mckaylasmith
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

dark sad slow-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I think this book was a gross misrepresentation of trauma and abuse and does a disservice to survivors everywhere. If this hadn’t of been a book club book, I would have DNFed it. It could have easily been half the length, also. 

It is also presented as a story about friendship with four main characters and she hardly developed two of them. 

The author was going for shock factor half of the time. So much of the plot is completely implausible - how much pedophilia is rampant in the world and that every single truck driver Jude hitched a ride with was a pedophile and that he was then just picked up off the street by Dr. Traylor who was also a pedophile?? I know how broken our system is but I do not believe all of these events could have happened to one person. 

And then, after all of the bullshit, killing off his partner and having no type of redemption? It is senseless suffering. I feel like it sends a message to victims of abuse that you are too broken, that there is no use carrying on. Life can be bleak but this was 100% trauma porn. 

Last gripe, she built a beautiful platonic friendship between Jude and Willem and then had to escalate it. Why? Why?? We need more books about platonic male friendship. She only did that to make his death more dramatic, which again, senseless suffering.
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