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A review by danielle_w
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
5.0
Trigger warnings: child trafficking, child abuse, child abandonment, rape, self-harm, and suicidal content.
I have added and removed A Little Life from my tbr list for the past five years because of the highly conflicting reviews I’ve read for it. (It’s brilliant and should have won the Man Booker! It’s trauma porn and should never have been published.) For the first 150 pages, I remained unconvinced and unimpressed- ready to point out the proverbial emperor’s nakedness and complaining to my husband all the way. And then, I began getting into Jude’s story- like really understanding it- and recognized that I was looking at life in its rawest form. And I’m still not sure I’d recommend it. This type of book takes a certain type of reader- it’s a lot to stomach, especially if you have trauma in your past and even though I am incredibly fond of it I’m not sure I’d ever be able to read it again.
There are human moments in here that I don’t believe have ever been captured by a pen before this book. Even in this- the most brutal, cruel childhood that one can imagine, the disability of this man, the events he goes through- there are universal human experiences and emotions that can easily be recognized. Somehow, I resonated very deeply with Jude, despite our widely different experiences. (Like, I miss him now.)
The way that disability is depicted in this book is incredibly important and not discussed enough. Disability is a taboo subject among the able-bodied reality, so whenever I see disability represented in a book I tend to be wary. However, Yanagihara expertly understands the disabled experience and puts it across really well- the inherent vulnerability of it, the inopportunness of it, the way we’re conditioned to see ourselves as burdens and our refusal to admit how bad it really is- but he is never a character to be pitied. Even the spoiler domestic abuse from Caleb is a pretty accurate reality, statistically, of how disabled people are abused in intimate relationships.
In fact, there are many statistical realities in this book; that once children have been abused they tend to be abused again, that childhood trauma resurfaces psychologically in middle life, that cutting and suicidal tendencies accompany trauma as coping measures, that many gay adults experienced sexual abuse as children from the same sex, that disability is linked with trauma. And yet. Never did this book or any of its characters feel formulaic- there were no caricatures or tropes- readers are simply watching a life unfold.
I don’t generally cry in books due to a sort of stubborn refusal to let authors emotionally manipulate me. The tearjerking moments of a loved one suddenly dying or a cancer diagnosis usually feel premeditated. But did I sob like a baby during this book (seriously, my husband gently pried it away and hid it from me during a crying episode). And it wasn’t because of the major events- it was because of the way life around those events took on different shades. I cried when Willem mentally argues during his run if he can really stay with Jude. I cried when Jude had hallucinations that his loving adoptive father was abusing him (the subconscious is a powerful thing). I cried when Jude, at 52 years old, threw his plate of grilled cheese against the wall and Harold and Julia responded by wrapping him in a hug. I cried when Andy kissed Jude’s forehead before he amputated his leg. Happy tears, despondent tears. This is another thing that this book gets right in its unflinching depiction of reality- the pattern of going through seasons so difficult you wonder how you will ever survive it, and then joy and friendship and ease, and then the cycle over and over again. Somehow, it wasn’t nihilistic (excepting the last ten pages).
That being said, I did have to skip/skim sometimes whole chapters that depicted childhood sexual abuse- she never wrote the graphics of it, but the implications were sickening enough- and at some points it did feel like too much. It got worse throughout the book, which I think was meant to show how Jude’s flashbacks felt at certain points in his life. The shifting timelines and perspectives were confusing at first and threw me off for a bit, but it’s actually very cleverly done. I read that Hanya wrote these timelines to show that Jude couldn’t always differentiate between the past and the present- very accurate for findings with trauma.
This book is unflinching- it shows the best of life and the worst of life with the same wholeheartedness. It is brutal and painful, and an emotional journey. But I feel A Little Life is so important because it charts the cartography of human life well. It has made me feel heightened to the joys and sorrows of the people around me- knowing that some of them, and I, will also never be ‘cured’, but that life is still worth living.
I have added and removed A Little Life from my tbr list for the past five years because of the highly conflicting reviews I’ve read for it. (It’s brilliant and should have won the Man Booker! It’s trauma porn and should never have been published.) For the first 150 pages, I remained unconvinced and unimpressed- ready to point out the proverbial emperor’s nakedness and complaining to my husband all the way. And then, I began getting into Jude’s story- like really understanding it- and recognized that I was looking at life in its rawest form. And I’m still not sure I’d recommend it. This type of book takes a certain type of reader- it’s a lot to stomach, especially if you have trauma in your past and even though I am incredibly fond of it I’m not sure I’d ever be able to read it again.
There are human moments in here that I don’t believe have ever been captured by a pen before this book. Even in this- the most brutal, cruel childhood that one can imagine, the disability of this man, the events he goes through- there are universal human experiences and emotions that can easily be recognized. Somehow, I resonated very deeply with Jude, despite our widely different experiences. (Like, I miss him now.)
The way that disability is depicted in this book is incredibly important and not discussed enough. Disability is a taboo subject among the able-bodied reality, so whenever I see disability represented in a book I tend to be wary. However, Yanagihara expertly understands the disabled experience and puts it across really well- the inherent vulnerability of it, the inopportunness of it, the way we’re conditioned to see ourselves as burdens and our refusal to admit how bad it really is- but he is never a character to be pitied. Even the spoiler domestic abuse from Caleb is a pretty accurate reality, statistically, of how disabled people are abused in intimate relationships.
In fact, there are many statistical realities in this book; that once children have been abused they tend to be abused again, that childhood trauma resurfaces psychologically in middle life, that cutting and suicidal tendencies accompany trauma as coping measures, that many gay adults experienced sexual abuse as children from the same sex, that disability is linked with trauma. And yet. Never did this book or any of its characters feel formulaic- there were no caricatures or tropes- readers are simply watching a life unfold.
I don’t generally cry in books due to a sort of stubborn refusal to let authors emotionally manipulate me. The tearjerking moments of a loved one suddenly dying or a cancer diagnosis usually feel premeditated. But did I sob like a baby during this book (seriously, my husband gently pried it away and hid it from me during a crying episode). And it wasn’t because of the major events- it was because of the way life around those events took on different shades. I cried when Willem mentally argues during his run if he can really stay with Jude. I cried when Jude had hallucinations that his loving adoptive father was abusing him (the subconscious is a powerful thing). I cried when Jude, at 52 years old, threw his plate of grilled cheese against the wall and Harold and Julia responded by wrapping him in a hug. I cried when Andy kissed Jude’s forehead before he amputated his leg. Happy tears, despondent tears. This is another thing that this book gets right in its unflinching depiction of reality- the pattern of going through seasons so difficult you wonder how you will ever survive it, and then joy and friendship and ease, and then the cycle over and over again. Somehow, it wasn’t nihilistic (excepting the last ten pages).
That being said, I did have to skip/skim sometimes whole chapters that depicted childhood sexual abuse- she never wrote the graphics of it, but the implications were sickening enough- and at some points it did feel like too much. It got worse throughout the book, which I think was meant to show how Jude’s flashbacks felt at certain points in his life. The shifting timelines and perspectives were confusing at first and threw me off for a bit, but it’s actually very cleverly done. I read that Hanya wrote these timelines to show that Jude couldn’t always differentiate between the past and the present- very accurate for findings with trauma.
This book is unflinching- it shows the best of life and the worst of life with the same wholeheartedness. It is brutal and painful, and an emotional journey. But I feel A Little Life is so important because it charts the cartography of human life well. It has made me feel heightened to the joys and sorrows of the people around me- knowing that some of them, and I, will also never be ‘cured’, but that life is still worth living.