A review by octowillow
A Little Life (Stage Adaptation) by Hanya Yanagihara, Koen Tachelet, Ivo van Hove

Did not finish book.
I was really excited for this book, i was eager to find out more about characters, their relionships. This book promised to be about friendship in adult life, promised to have four protagonists. Well, turns out it’s about one of them and his trauma. Which could be more okay if book’s premise was more clear about this. When i realized that this book is actually about abuse and it’s consequences in victim’s life, i was ready to push foward and forgive the little deception, to see what author has to say on the matter. And i really liked it when Jude’s backstory was being left vague, i liked the depiction of self harm, realistic and shocking, but it still felt respectfull and full of empathy. And i would really prefer it if book’s focus stayed on that, i feel like we didn’t need to see all of Jude’s previous suffering in such a vivid detail. It was prolonged and felt like it was written for shock value. When i was dicovering how every aspect of his life was filled with harm and sexual abuse, just one year after the other more more terrible things were happening, the link between me and Jude severed - he was no longer a person i was reading about, he turned into a book character. Book character whose author just didn’t know when to stop. And it happend for every other character as well - i starter to see everyone as serie of joices made by the author and i scared to question them - why is putting jude through the next traumatic event here? What is this telling me? Why is Willem, the prettiest, most handsome and white is one we should love the most, and why fat and black JB is written as annoying and mean? Why did we get only two pages of Malcolm pov? 
This book feels like the author changed her mind 200 pages into writing it, it feels inconsistent and impulsive. I stopped reading it when i couldn’t banish pictures of raped little boy from my mind before sleep, i didn’t feel like anything this book would do later on could could attone for all previous bad decisions.

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