Review by deelisabeth - A Little Life

deelisabeth 's review for:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

0.5

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Yanagihara, I am convinced, wrote this novel with the sole purpose of making her main character’s life absolutely and undeniably miserable, from beginning to end, to the point it was almost sadistic. The writing itself is confusing - I read several pages at a time having no idea who is even being talked about, and it wasn’t as though the writing itself was particularly good or beautiful in any right. There was not a single fragment of hope in this entire excessively-long novel, and the exhaustion I felt when I finished was inexplicable. I found Jude to be an incredibly shallow character in that he had no depth at all; yes, his trauma is the centre point of the book, but besides that, the readers know absolutely nothing about him. Not his likes, or his interests, or what makes him who he is. Whilst I recognize that trauma plays a major role in shaping a person, it is not a person’s sole identity, and Yanagihara made Jude entirely void of anything aside from these traumas. The supporting characters also lack any depth and they serve only one purpose: their role in Jude’s life, whatever it may be. There is mental health awareness and literature made to shed light on the issues present within this novel, but this was just excessive. It was so gruesome that I pity Jude; not for the trauma he’s been through, but because he’d been created by Yanagihara at all. This was a vile novel that should have never been published, and I can’t imagine what purpose it could possibly have besides purposefully hurting the readers. There is awareness, and then there is whatever this book is. The only reason it even gets 0.5 stars is because I ended up caring for Jude enough to feel he hadn’t deserved anything that had happened to him from beginning to end.

Content Warnings