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iloponis 's review for:
A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
idk if ive ever had such mixed feelings about a book before in my life
the good:
i did cry. while its not really that hard to make me cry, it does require a certain degree of competence from the author, so i have to give credit where its due here. this book was beautifully written, most of the time, and by the end i truly felt connected to some of the characters and i think thats admirablefuck JB tho i found him insufferable i am also still thinking about this book days after finishing it, which i think is somewhat notable as i am most disappointed by books that are forgettable, and this certainly wasn't.
the bad:
its so fucking long. it didnt need to be that long. i knew right away that there was a truly gratuitous amount of detail. for example, i left myself a note asking my future self if the detailed descriptions of JB's studio mates that we get in the beginning chapters would end up being relevant at all (answer: it sure doesnt!) and there's a lot of stuff like that. just pages and pages of shit that doesnt really matter or add much. again, this shit did not need to be that long. this is coming from someone who has read wheel of time and the stormlight archive and other long drawn out books so i think i have the authority to say this.
the ugly:
my primary qualm is that the depiction of self harm did not need to be so frequent and so descriptive. it just didnt. i did not need to read over and over about the techniques, the sensations, the visuals, etc. this is not to say that i think that books shouldn't depict self harm, or cutting, or anything like that. i think its a real life thing that should be present in stories about real life, but jesus christ this was the most triggering thing i think ive ever read. and im doing a bit of research on the author, and just pulled this quote from an interview with her:
"But I don’t believe in it — talk therapy, I should specify — myself. One of the things that makes me most suspicious about the field is its insistence that life is always the answer. Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life."
and that just pissed me off so bad. to think that way is one thing, i understand how a person can think that. but to decry therapy and recovery so publicly, when you're writing a book like this, just feels so ... gross.
i was also distracted by how many pedophiles jude came into contact with. maybe im naive, or sheltered, or privileged, but i find it really hard to believe that a 13 year old could make his way across the country just by providing sexual favors to truck drivers? am i just deluded or is pedophilia not that endemic?
similarly, i found the whole caleb incident to be so transparently just for the sake of making jude suffer that it was distracting. we get a brief potential explanation for caleb’s behavior, that he hates seeing weakness because he watched his parents weaken after they got sick, but like …. this doesnt feel like a concrete reason for why he acted that way? this successful public figure would risk a murder charge just for that? obviously i understand abusers are gonna abuse but i kind of find the novel's reasoning for it hard to believe and so it just seems like a shallow attempt at characterization
i think most of qualms with this novel can be summed up with the word gratuitous. it was so, so gratuitous in every way
the good:
i did cry. while its not really that hard to make me cry, it does require a certain degree of competence from the author, so i have to give credit where its due here. this book was beautifully written, most of the time, and by the end i truly felt connected to some of the characters and i think thats admirable
the bad:
its so fucking long. it didnt need to be that long. i knew right away that there was a truly gratuitous amount of detail. for example, i left myself a note asking my future self if the detailed descriptions of JB's studio mates that we get in the beginning chapters would end up being relevant at all (answer: it sure doesnt!) and there's a lot of stuff like that. just pages and pages of shit that doesnt really matter or add much. again, this shit did not need to be that long. this is coming from someone who has read wheel of time and the stormlight archive and other long drawn out books so i think i have the authority to say this.
the ugly:
my primary qualm is that the depiction of self harm did not need to be so frequent and so descriptive. it just didnt. i did not need to read over and over about the techniques, the sensations, the visuals, etc. this is not to say that i think that books shouldn't depict self harm, or cutting, or anything like that. i think its a real life thing that should be present in stories about real life, but jesus christ this was the most triggering thing i think ive ever read. and im doing a bit of research on the author, and just pulled this quote from an interview with her:
"But I don’t believe in it — talk therapy, I should specify — myself. One of the things that makes me most suspicious about the field is its insistence that life is always the answer. Every other medical specialty devoted to the care of the seriously ill recognizes that at some point, the doctor’s job is to help the patient die; that there are points at which death is preferable to life."
and that just pissed me off so bad. to think that way is one thing, i understand how a person can think that. but to decry therapy and recovery so publicly, when you're writing a book like this, just feels so ... gross.
similarly, i found the whole caleb incident to be so transparently just for the sake of making jude suffer that it was distracting. we get a brief potential explanation for caleb’s behavior, that he hates seeing weakness because he watched his parents weaken after they got sick, but like …. this doesnt feel like a concrete reason for why he acted that way? this successful public figure would risk a murder charge just for that? obviously i understand abusers are gonna abuse but i kind of find the novel's reasoning for it hard to believe and so it just seems like a shallow attempt at characterization
i think most of qualms with this novel can be summed up with the word gratuitous. it was so, so gratuitous in every way
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment
the depiction of self harm (specifically cutting) in this book is so, so graphic. i cannot emphasize enough how graphic it is. most of the other content warnings are also recurring but i need to specifically mention here that the cutting is frequent, descriptive, and gratuitous