A review by brannonkirkhuang
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Did not finish book. Stopped at 42%.

This book is awful, to the point that I was just on goodreads liking every single one star review I read. It doesn’t deserve a single positive rating. It is misery porn. It is torture porn. It is rape porn. It is entirely not based in reality. Caleb, who somehow manages to date Jude, who is disabled, turns out to hate disabled people because his parents were sick??? What the fuck??? Then we get long detailed descriptions of him abusing Jude because he hates Jude, and I mean the most fucked up torture you can imagine - unreal torture, on top of rape. To the point that it stops being even believable and just feels disgusting, like it’s the author’s fantasy and she’s enjoying writing this. Like, you literally get pulled out of the story and suddenly you realize you’re just reading a fantasy of violence that someone has written, because it’s not even real. It wouldn’t ever really happen like this because people, the world, isn’t like this. And let’s also talk about how Jude’s doctor always threatens to commit him but NEVER DOES??? Fuck you Andy!!! Fuck you, you’re a bad doctor. Fuck Willem for refusing to force that conversation out of Jude. Bro, I don’t care how scared you are that he’ll reject you and you’ll lose him as a friend, you have to have the fucking conversation. Nobody in this book actually cares about Jude. Jude isn’t real. Jude’s existence is manufactured by the author in order to have a punching bag to mistreat. Jude is a special creation by a sadistic author who wants to torture someone to an unbearable extent. There is no mercy, no respite, no reason, no logic. Fuck this book. Fuck this. Jude doesn’t exist! There is no one like Jude! No one has Jude’s condition and Jude’s hangups about everything! This is not a real person. This book is impossible. I’m so pissed off and grossed out by what I’ve read and I know it won’t get any better. It only goes downhill from here. How can it get worse than this??? What’s the point of it all? Why read it when it’s so obviously fake? The only reason to read it is if you are a fan of torture! What a joke. Never listening to booktok again. And what’s more, there are no women in this book, at all. Their existence is brutally inconsequential here. I thought it was weird from the start, but now it seems like a mild nitpick compared to the shit I’ve read. Fuck Hanya Yanagihara. I ain’t finishing this shit.