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julzebel 's review for:
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
DNF at 20%
“You should read A Little Life,” was a recommendation I got more than once after expressing my love for Demon Copperhead. I added it to my TBR, but put off starting it—not just because of the length, but because the cover really gives me the ick. As it turns out, the cover was actually my face while reading this book!
The writing is undeniably gorgeous. But at 20%, I found myself weeping and physically sick after reading about the abuse of a five-year-old orphan. I wondered: Is this going to be worth it? It wasn’t the same kind of heartbreak as Demon Copperhead. This felt heavier—less like a story about trauma than an exercise in it. Your girl barely sleeps as it is, I don’t need to be up blubbering with a belly ache over my book.
I turned to the trusty reviews. The author reportedly set out to write a character “so broken he can’t be fixed” and then subjects him (and the reader) to unrelenting torture for 700+ pages because she can. I don’t mind a tragic story—give me social commentary or layered humanity and I’m in. But here, apparently despair is the point, and for that reason I’m out
“You should read A Little Life,” was a recommendation I got more than once after expressing my love for Demon Copperhead. I added it to my TBR, but put off starting it—not just because of the length, but because the cover really gives me the ick. As it turns out, the cover was actually my face while reading this book!
The writing is undeniably gorgeous. But at 20%, I found myself weeping and physically sick after reading about the abuse of a five-year-old orphan. I wondered: Is this going to be worth it? It wasn’t the same kind of heartbreak as Demon Copperhead. This felt heavier—less like a story about trauma than an exercise in it. Your girl barely sleeps as it is, I don’t need to be up blubbering with a belly ache over my book.
I turned to the trusty reviews. The author reportedly set out to write a character “so broken he can’t be fixed” and then subjects him (and the reader) to unrelenting torture for 700+ pages because she can. I don’t mind a tragic story—give me social commentary or layered humanity and I’m in. But here, apparently despair is the point, and for that reason I’m out