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A review by whitneysederberg
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
0.5
the worst book i’ve read in a very long time. dnf around p400. the prose is excellent and hides the gratuitous trauma and misery quite well, shields the improbability of it all.
maybe i’m the wrong person for this book since i did find it deeply deeply triggering. i really wish i never picked it up. but i waited and waited for payoff for reading all the violence and misery and after 400 pages i couldn’t take it anymore. i’ve read about worse things, horrors, but i don’t know if i’ve ever read something so depressing for the sake of being depressing. The Bluest Eye, for example, covers many of the same topics without feeling pointless or indulgent. Toni Morrison is sparse with her words and I find her writing to even be much heavier.
the characters are not particularly well written. for some reason they are all hyper-successful and talented against their varying odds. JB’s art is interesting but it is perhaps the most boring addiction narrative i’ve read.
but yeah this book seriously fetishizes its own sadness. i think you need to be very very VERY careful when you write about SH and SA, but the events were written so unrealistically i found it deeply fetishy.
and finally, what kind of poor person eats at Pho Viet Huong if you live in chinatown?? i should have known how stupid the author is from the first scene. i have no idea what the time period is here but even in 2024 you can stuff yourself for $3 from basically any dumpling place. besides pho viet huong is probably the worst pho place in lower manhattan.
maybe i’m the wrong person for this book since i did find it deeply deeply triggering. i really wish i never picked it up. but i waited and waited for payoff for reading all the violence and misery and after 400 pages i couldn’t take it anymore. i’ve read about worse things, horrors, but i don’t know if i’ve ever read something so depressing for the sake of being depressing. The Bluest Eye, for example, covers many of the same topics without feeling pointless or indulgent. Toni Morrison is sparse with her words and I find her writing to even be much heavier.
the characters are not particularly well written. for some reason they are all hyper-successful and talented against their varying odds. JB’s art is interesting but it is perhaps the most boring addiction narrative i’ve read.
but yeah this book seriously fetishizes its own sadness. i think you need to be very very VERY careful when you write about SH and SA, but the events were written so unrealistically i found it deeply fetishy.
and finally, what kind of poor person eats at Pho Viet Huong if you live in chinatown?? i should have known how stupid the author is from the first scene. i have no idea what the time period is here but even in 2024 you can stuff yourself for $3 from basically any dumpling place. besides pho viet huong is probably the worst pho place in lower manhattan.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and Violence