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A review by grrtthd
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
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
2.25
*Spoilers*
What to say about A Little Life.
I read the book quite quickly, and even though the storytelling was mundane a lot of the time (there are some lovely sentences here and there, but also a kind of utilitarian simplicity to the language that made it easily digestible), I pretty much stayed engaged the whole time. I was of course horrified by what was going on, since the story baits you from the beginning with needing to find out what exactly the hell happened to this poor man. And that feeling drew me in at first.
I finished it on vacation, and felt emotional at the end, as so many others on the internet did. I even recommended it to a friend.
And then with any amount of distance I realized what it was, and my perception totally changed. This was not a tragedy in the artistic dramatic sense of the word, because the best tragedies have something universal to tell. A message to send at the mournful expense of its participants. And this book does so much more than kill its protagonists. Yanagihara tortures Jude for hundreds of pages before he is allowed to die, all for--what? It was like he had to stay alive just long enough for us to find out what had happened to him. And so when he finally ends his life, as he had been trying to do nearly the entire book, I felt complicit in his suffering for having read what came before. As if he was allowed to go because I was finished with the tale.
There is a really overarching exploitative and cringe-inducing treatment of queer characters, which I won't get into right now, but feels wrong to engage with. As a whole, the story hits that weird true crime-type response where you have to keep reading because what is happening is so horrifying. And it feels wrong to participate in stereotypes of suffering that are so blown out of proportion to reality that they feel unnecessarily detailed and misfortunate, until it is sufficiently The Most Tragic Story Ever.
The book takes such a long time to develop, and the plot and secrets only come together near the end. And then when the explanations for his suffering finally arrive, it's impossible to sympathize with Jude anymore as an actual person. He is forced to absorb tragedy so the reader can be drawn in by tragic events, which gives him a sense of unreality and detachment from actual humanity. Actual humanity is where any great tragedy reveals its universal human truths, and A Little Life does not ultimately have much to say beyond what happened. Once you figure out what happened, it's finished.
Which is, in my opinion, not an engaging or cathartic reading experience, and a strange and unfeeling way to tell a story. It's a lot, in so many ways. Not ultimately for me.
What to say about A Little Life.
I read the book quite quickly, and even though the storytelling was mundane a lot of the time (there are some lovely sentences here and there, but also a kind of utilitarian simplicity to the language that made it easily digestible), I pretty much stayed engaged the whole time. I was of course horrified by what was going on, since the story baits you from the beginning with needing to find out what exactly the hell happened to this poor man. And that feeling drew me in at first.
I finished it on vacation, and felt emotional at the end, as so many others on the internet did. I even recommended it to a friend.
And then with any amount of distance I realized what it was, and my perception totally changed. This was not a tragedy in the artistic dramatic sense of the word, because the best tragedies have something universal to tell. A message to send at the mournful expense of its participants. And this book does so much more than kill its protagonists. Yanagihara tortures Jude for hundreds of pages before he is allowed to die, all for--what? It was like he had to stay alive just long enough for us to find out what had happened to him. And so when he finally ends his life, as he had been trying to do nearly the entire book, I felt complicit in his suffering for having read what came before. As if he was allowed to go because I was finished with the tale.
There is a really overarching exploitative and cringe-inducing treatment of queer characters, which I won't get into right now, but feels wrong to engage with. As a whole, the story hits that weird true crime-type response where you have to keep reading because what is happening is so horrifying. And it feels wrong to participate in stereotypes of suffering that are so blown out of proportion to reality that they feel unnecessarily detailed and misfortunate, until it is sufficiently The Most Tragic Story Ever.
The book takes such a long time to develop, and the plot and secrets only come together near the end. And then when the explanations for his suffering finally arrive, it's impossible to sympathize with Jude anymore as an actual person. He is forced to absorb tragedy so the reader can be drawn in by tragic events, which gives him a sense of unreality and detachment from actual humanity. Actual humanity is where any great tragedy reveals its universal human truths, and A Little Life does not ultimately have much to say beyond what happened. Once you figure out what happened, it's finished.
Which is, in my opinion, not an engaging or cathartic reading experience, and a strange and unfeeling way to tell a story. It's a lot, in so many ways. Not ultimately for me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Chronic illness, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Blood, Trafficking, Medical trauma, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, and Abandonment