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A review by joohoney
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
1.0
I finally finished it oh my GOD. I really don’t know how I did it. I do know, however, that I will never read anything written by this author ever again.
While a lot of people on here are impressed by Yanagihara’s writing and seem to argue that she doesn’t seem to be present in the story, for me the opposite is true. Her opinions are at the very heart of this book. They are why the story is told the way it is. It is the reason why I disliked it so much. As someone who DOES believe in triggers warnings, in therapy, in actual stories of abuse victims and their importance (in the sense that I think it is important to be familiar with such stories when writing an entire book about them), this story is just incredibly hard to read because the author does not believe in any of these things, and that became painfully obvious the more I read. I am so glad that some people could find themselves in this book, and felt comforted by it. I am not giving this book one star to invalidate your experiences or opinions. However, I really do not think this book handled its subject matter wisely nor respectfully. I genuinely wish these characters would have been written by someone else, and would have gotten the love and respect they deserve from someone who could do them justice. This book just feels like one big irresponsibility to me.
While the author's opinions became obvious through what was missing from the story, they were also emphasized through what can in fact be found in these pages. Two things that stood out to me, and that I very much disagree with, is this author's take on ableism and Blackness as it is written through two of the main Black characters JD and Malcolm.
The ableism wasn’t just emphasized through one specific character and/or their opinions; it seemed to be a pattern throughout the whole book. It just HAD to be emphasized how bad wheelchairs are, so much that there is a comparison between people in wheelchairs on a playground and 'mechanical insects' (an absolute BIZARRE and disgusting comparison to make), and the constant emphasis on the weakness that a wheelchair symbolizes. At one point I genuinely thought this was just the author’s way of expressing her ableist opinions, since I could find no justification for these exhausting and abhorrent repetitions that seemed to come at me from every fucking angle. Why do you feel the need to write that? To repeat that? Not by a single character but by multiple, even if we are to believe they are “nice” characters?
The way race was treated in this book was absolutely vile to me. The Black characters were tossed to the side the more the story progressed and they were both quite fucking awful from the beginning (JB privileged beyond words and Malcolm confused about his race (if you are not Black how would you know this? How can you write about such serious issues?) and at one point a very obvious lesbophobe). They felt like extras, like outcasts in their own group of friends from the beginning. When Malcolm (and then also Sophie) met their horrible ends, they could not even be described with more than a few words. How coincidental for the two Black characters to be treated like this and turn out to be awful, privileged, spoiled and entitled????? I guess Malcolm somewhat redeemed himself toward the end of the story, but it was obvious that Willem was supposed to be the only 'true' good person within Jude's group of friends. That felt very wrong to me, especially given the author is not Black herself. Stop writing and creating characters you cannot do justice.
There were so many more things that seemed to have been subtly woven into the story, but to me simply felt like the author expressing her disdain for a certain topic under the guise of another character; fatphobia (only evil characters were fat and their fatness always carefully described and emphasized), lesbophobia (lesbians are often described mockingly or are the butt of the joke, which was just not funny to read at all and also very unnecessary, especially given the author isn't gay (as far as we all know) and is making gay people crack jokes about lesbians? Why do you feel the need to write about this?)
Overall this book was not for me at all and it genuinely made me bitter as hell. Stories about victims and survivors of abuse are so fucking important, and need to be heard so much, but in respectful ways. In ways that do them justice. This felt like one big mockery, where misery was inserted just to make the reader uncomfortable and deeply disturbed. I know a lot of people do not agree with the statement that this is trauma porn, but when I read the following passage on page 78, it really did feel like some of the descriptions related to Jude did NOT have to be in this book: "Jude shrugged, and Willem noticed for the first time that his lips had gone a strange color, a not-color, although maybe that was the streetlights, which slapped and slid across his face, bruising it yellow and ocher and a sickly larval white as the cab pushed north." Was this necessary? Can NOTHING and NOBODY leave Jude alone? The voyeuristic tone with which this book was written, together with such descriptions as the one mentioned above, that were clearly creative CHOICES, often made me feel like this story was simply disrespectful. It didn't have to be written in this way. These characters deserved better.
While a lot of people on here are impressed by Yanagihara’s writing and seem to argue that she doesn’t seem to be present in the story, for me the opposite is true. Her opinions are at the very heart of this book. They are why the story is told the way it is. It is the reason why I disliked it so much. As someone who DOES believe in triggers warnings, in therapy, in actual stories of abuse victims and their importance (in the sense that I think it is important to be familiar with such stories when writing an entire book about them), this story is just incredibly hard to read because the author does not believe in any of these things, and that became painfully obvious the more I read. I am so glad that some people could find themselves in this book, and felt comforted by it. I am not giving this book one star to invalidate your experiences or opinions. However, I really do not think this book handled its subject matter wisely nor respectfully. I genuinely wish these characters would have been written by someone else, and would have gotten the love and respect they deserve from someone who could do them justice. This book just feels like one big irresponsibility to me.
While the author's opinions became obvious through what was missing from the story, they were also emphasized through what can in fact be found in these pages. Two things that stood out to me, and that I very much disagree with, is this author's take on ableism and Blackness as it is written through two of the main Black characters JD and Malcolm.
The ableism wasn’t just emphasized through one specific character and/or their opinions; it seemed to be a pattern throughout the whole book. It just HAD to be emphasized how bad wheelchairs are, so much that there is a comparison between people in wheelchairs on a playground and 'mechanical insects' (an absolute BIZARRE and disgusting comparison to make), and the constant emphasis on the weakness that a wheelchair symbolizes. At one point I genuinely thought this was just the author’s way of expressing her ableist opinions, since I could find no justification for these exhausting and abhorrent repetitions that seemed to come at me from every fucking angle. Why do you feel the need to write that? To repeat that? Not by a single character but by multiple, even if we are to believe they are “nice” characters?
The way race was treated in this book was absolutely vile to me. The Black characters were tossed to the side the more the story progressed and they were both quite fucking awful from the beginning (JB privileged beyond words and Malcolm confused about his race (if you are not Black how would you know this? How can you write about such serious issues?) and at one point a very obvious lesbophobe). They felt like extras, like outcasts in their own group of friends from the beginning. When Malcolm (and then also Sophie) met their horrible ends, they could not even be described with more than a few words. How coincidental for the two Black characters to be treated like this and turn out to be awful, privileged, spoiled and entitled????? I guess Malcolm somewhat redeemed himself toward the end of the story, but it was obvious that Willem was supposed to be the only 'true' good person within Jude's group of friends. That felt very wrong to me, especially given the author is not Black herself. Stop writing and creating characters you cannot do justice.
There were so many more things that seemed to have been subtly woven into the story, but to me simply felt like the author expressing her disdain for a certain topic under the guise of another character; fatphobia (only evil characters were fat and their fatness always carefully described and emphasized), lesbophobia (lesbians are often described mockingly or are the butt of the joke, which was just not funny to read at all and also very unnecessary, especially given the author isn't gay (as far as we all know) and is making gay people crack jokes about lesbians? Why do you feel the need to write about this?)
Overall this book was not for me at all and it genuinely made me bitter as hell. Stories about victims and survivors of abuse are so fucking important, and need to be heard so much, but in respectful ways. In ways that do them justice. This felt like one big mockery, where misery was inserted just to make the reader uncomfortable and deeply disturbed. I know a lot of people do not agree with the statement that this is trauma porn, but when I read the following passage on page 78, it really did feel like some of the descriptions related to Jude did NOT have to be in this book: "Jude shrugged, and Willem noticed for the first time that his lips had gone a strange color, a not-color, although maybe that was the streetlights, which slapped and slid across his face, bruising it yellow and ocher and a sickly larval white as the cab pushed north." Was this necessary? Can NOTHING and NOBODY leave Jude alone? The voyeuristic tone with which this book was written, together with such descriptions as the one mentioned above, that were clearly creative CHOICES, often made me feel like this story was simply disrespectful. It didn't have to be written in this way. These characters deserved better.