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A review by tossevent
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I think I'm one of the rare cases where this book was neither amazing nor completely terrible for me. I walked in only knowing that it was a controversial book and walked out agreeing that it was controversial, I guess.
To start I think it's quite well written. At the same time I do feel that the author tends use these run-on sentences that makes it difficult for me to understand who specifically she's speaking about. It's mostly an issue with sentence structure/grammar for me. But on the other side, she is a master at crafting a specific atmosphere that casts a wide shadow throughout the whole book. And I speak of this shadow not necessarily in terms of the book's content (although it certainly applies here) but just the way she creates the environment envelops the story.
She does an excellent job of putting you in Jude's mind and justifying his actions. He is a very well developed character but unfortunately almost the only developed character. Although she does a good job developing the rest of the cast, they really only serve as devices to Jude's life. Understandably, that was the author's project and vision. Unfortunately, as impressive as her writing is, the topic did not interest me or draw me in. It's extremely provocative but I never find myself unable to put the book down. There are many specific instances where I find topics that are indeed interesting and felt even relatable: Harold's little monologue about having children was an interesting exploration of the topic, even some of Jude's actions can be relatable (coming from someone with minimal trauma in their life) but it is really only these specific cases that I find interesting. Jude as a whole, as a character (and thus this book) are not a topic of my interest. For me it would have been a more effective story if we delved into the side characters much more. I wanted to see more between the 4 main characters throughout the book but really after the first quarter of the book we hardly see JB and Malcolm anymore.
My other nitpick is that her descriptions of travel can get long-winded and add no value for me. I think it's a great device because she inserts so much of this glamor amidst 800 pages of slow-paced reading so you slowly forget about all the terrible things that happened to Jude-and this replicates the repression of his memories very effectively for the reader; at a certain point I also forgot about Caleb as Jude probably very much wanted to. But overall I found myself being almost bored by these descriptions. It was an effective device in a meta way - more for the reader than it was for the characters.
Is it trauma porn? Probably, but unfortunately it's so well crafted that I can't completely write it off as a terrible piece of literature. You could argue it's perhaps worse than bad literature because it has the ability to poison the mind. It certainly impacted my mind during the week or so I was reading it. My friend said "it's very well written but she could have kept all that to herself" and that's the best way to put it.
Overall: Impressive world crafting but uninteresting topic and some issues with writing style; it's a character study done very well that I'm not particularly interested in. [Side note: author also has a tendency to write about very similar topics... 🚩 🚩 🚩 ]
To start I think it's quite well written. At the same time I do feel that the author tends use these run-on sentences that makes it difficult for me to understand who specifically she's speaking about. It's mostly an issue with sentence structure/grammar for me. But on the other side, she is a master at crafting a specific atmosphere that casts a wide shadow throughout the whole book. And I speak of this shadow not necessarily in terms of the book's content (although it certainly applies here) but just the way she creates the environment envelops the story.
She does an excellent job of putting you in Jude's mind and justifying his actions. He is a very well developed character but unfortunately almost the only developed character. Although she does a good job developing the rest of the cast, they really only serve as devices to Jude's life. Understandably, that was the author's project and vision. Unfortunately, as impressive as her writing is, the topic did not interest me or draw me in. It's extremely provocative but I never find myself unable to put the book down. There are many specific instances where I find topics that are indeed interesting and felt even relatable: Harold's little monologue about having children was an interesting exploration of the topic, even some of Jude's actions can be relatable (coming from someone with minimal trauma in their life) but it is really only these specific cases that I find interesting. Jude as a whole, as a character (and thus this book) are not a topic of my interest. For me it would have been a more effective story if we delved into the side characters much more. I wanted to see more between the 4 main characters throughout the book but really after the first quarter of the book we hardly see JB and Malcolm anymore.
My other nitpick is that her descriptions of travel can get long-winded and add no value for me. I think it's a great device because she inserts so much of this glamor amidst 800 pages of slow-paced reading so you slowly forget about all the terrible things that happened to Jude-and this replicates the repression of his memories very effectively for the reader; at a certain point I also forgot about Caleb as Jude probably very much wanted to. But overall I found myself being almost bored by these descriptions. It was an effective device in a meta way - more for the reader than it was for the characters.
Is it trauma porn? Probably, but unfortunately it's so well crafted that I can't completely write it off as a terrible piece of literature. You could argue it's perhaps worse than bad literature because it has the ability to poison the mind. It certainly impacted my mind during the week or so I was reading it. My friend said "it's very well written but she could have kept all that to herself" and that's the best way to put it.
Overall: Impressive world crafting but uninteresting topic and some issues with writing style; it's a character study done very well that I'm not particularly interested in. [Side note: author also has a tendency to write about very similar topics... 🚩 🚩 🚩 ]
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Sexual harassment
you don't need to read it