A review by findingtimeforreading
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Am I okay because I didn’t feel devastated at the end? 

A Little Life details the very traumatic life of Jude from childhood to adulthood. We are carried through all of the traumatic life events he has experienced with interspersed viewpoints from the people surrounding Jude in life.

I am in two minds about this book. Firstly, it’s an incredibly powerful story about a horridly traumatic and painful life, and delves into how trauma can completely change how a brain develops. Yanagihara paints Jude as
“too far gone” to heal
, and conveys every person in Jude’s life as utterly imperfect. This is an incredibly important viewpoint in literature as it is important that empathy and stories are not solely focussed on those that did everything correctly. A Little Life allows us to embrace the imperfection of every character and continuously feel empathy because it is deserved even for those who were not perfect.

On the other hand, this did not evoke the emotion I was expecting. The combination of third-person narration and categorically descriptive writing style created a story that was very hard to immerse yourself within. It felt much more like a descriptive essay of Jude’s trauma than a story meant to portray suffering and dejection.
Due to this, I was unable to truly feel devastated at the end of this book.


I am giving A Little Life a solid 3 stars for a story that deserves to be told, but deserved better narration to evoke the emotion this type of story is worthy of.
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