A Little Life

How do I hate this book, let me count the ways. I hate the pretentious writing, the author's dedicated lack of research, the bloated, overblown length of the repetitive text, the bandwagon that everyone jumped on, the hype generated by the bandwagon - which I fell for - and first and foremost, I HATE JUDE ST FRANCIS, a protagonist so miserable that he can't even put his friends (and the readers of this obnoxious published fan fiction) out of their misery by ending his life far flaming sooner than he did.

If there was such a thing as compensation for badly written books, I would be claiming back the week I wasted with Jude and his exaggerated, ongoing life of trauma, and also suing for damages because my reading mojo nearly flatlined. show more Ploughing through section after section of Jude apologising for existing while simultaneously being successful at every task he turned his giant brain to became old pretty quickly but by the time I realised that I should DNF, I was too far in to quit - not that I thought the story would pick up, only that I had already wasted hours getting up to the halfway point of OVER 700 PAGES! Why did this book need to be so long when Jude whining like a bitch is the only thing that ever happens? Even his three close college friends rarely get a look in, or develop believable personalities. Willem is an award-winning actor, JB is the toast of the New York art scene (despite only ever painting the portraits of his three friends) and Malcolm is a innovative architect, but all they have in common is fawning over Jude.

Jude himself is like the fantasy hero of a teenager's over-emotive Wattpad fiction. Putting aside his backstory of abuse so overwrought that the slow drip-drip of details is both comic and yet painfully insulting to actual survivors of childhood sexual and physical assault, he is described - ad nauseum - as both devastatingly handsome and universally talented. In the words of Willem:

“You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector."

He's also a brilliant mathematician and a cutthroat lawyer who instantly rises to the top of the firm he joins despite spending half of his professional life recovering from some physical or mental trauma. And everybody loves him! That should actually have been the title of this book: 'Everybody Loves Jude: Though God Knows Why'. Willem, his chick magnet best friend falls in love with him, an older couple legally adopt him when he's in his thirties, the parents of his friends all love him more than their own children, his doctor practically dedicates his career to being on call 24/7 (while betraying his professional duty to report self harm and get the little brat committed).

And yet. Does this sudden good fortune after a childhood of being abused by everyone from predatory paedophiles to Franciscan monks make Jude happy, or even independent and resilient? Not a chance! He is an emotional vampire who drains every drop of love and care out of his friends and adopted family, while selfishly proclaiming that he hurts himself and deceives others to protect them from the 'truth' about who he is:

"I’m sorry I’m such a problem for you. I’m sorry I’m ruining your retirement. I’m sorry I’m not happier. I’m sorry I’m not over Willem. I’m sorry I have a job you don’t respect. I’m sorry I’m such a nothing of a person."

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I wanted to end him myself after 300 pages of incessant whining. Harold and Julia are nothing but loving, Willem - despite, you know, forcing Jude to have sex because everyone needs sex, right? - constantly puts his high-flying celebrity on hold to mop up after Jude cuts himself to ribbons, Dr Andy spends thirty years patching him up when he should have had him locked up. I took great delight in the isolated moments where first JB, then Andy and finally Willem all snapped and told Jude what they thought of his shitty attitude. Of course, such brutal honesty was only answered with five paragraphs of 'sorry, sorry, sorry'.

Yes, abuse is horrific, but Yanagihara - who admitted that she didn't do any serious research into the sensitive issues of Jude's story - is hardly helping to raise positive awareness about the reality of surviving such trauma. Neither does her frankly homophobic attitude to the lgbt characters in the book make this a 'great gay novel' - Willem falls in love with Jude, outs their relationship while refusing to comprehend how Jude's past might make him fear intimacy, and then announces that he is 'not fundamentally' gay and goes back to sleeping with women.

I hated every page of this novel, finally started skim-reading to get through the never-ending misery and have now deleted the download entirely from my Kindle. I wish I could do the same for my brain. The only positive note I can add is that the edition with the melodramatic, cry baby man's face is the most appropriate cover art I have seen all year. Really, all l I can do is echo the advice I recently read in another less than glowing review: 'If you haven't read this, then don't'. show less

I am numb, a hollowed-out husk of a person. This book is rich and decadent, so beautifully crafted it feels like a betrayal to be so wrecked by it. The pace is long and sprawling, but never dull, as it follows lives woven together through love, pain, and everything in between. It’s devastatingly relatable and achingly painful. There are characters I wish I could be half as good as and others I’ve never hated more in all my life. I had to stop so many times because I couldn’t see through the tears or breathe through the weight. I’m writing this too close to the end, raw and wrecked, but I know this story will linger, ready to sneak up and gut-punch me at any moment. How do other readers survive this? It’s such a deeply moving show more book, and while I want to beg everyone to read it, I know it’s not for everyone. If you do, you’ll come out a little more broken and somehow a little more human. show less

To be one hundred percent honest, A Little Life disturbed me though and through. While on the surface the story follows the lives of four college friends, they all have serious issues that border on all-out tragedy. Living in New York and trying to make a go of different careers, it is terrifying to watch their weaknesses chew them up and spit them out one by one. At the same time, there is something unnervingly beautiful about their friendships despite vastly different upbringings. At the center is Jude. Beautifully broken Jude. At times I wanted to hurl his story out the window in seething frustration. He doesn't want to talk about his life. He is a mystery. He can't talk about his parents of ethnic background for fear of betrayal. He show more can't navigate stairs and needs an elevator. He cuts himself to the point of suicidal. He's not white and doesn't mention his childhood. He's always in pain, wearing leg braces or using a wheelchair. His injury is not from an accident but something deliberate. He is a glutton for punishment beyond human sanity. He went to same law school as his friend Malcolm's dad. He is the most beautiful of the group; and the most sly. He doesn't like to be touched. Yet, he is a loyal-to-the-core friend. Like a many-layered onion, the reader peels back the mystery that is Jude. When you get to his core you'll wish you hadn't. The abuses he suffers are so numerous and varied; each one more horrifying than the next that you have to ask yourself, how much trauma can one soul take? show less

All writing is artifice, and the emotions which it evokes are themselves artificial: they are emotions by proxy, and they betray as much about us ourselves as about a book or the characters who are in it. Reading this novel over a single long weekend, I have had to pause and ask why I am stirred by it, why I even care, what it is within me which is at least partly answered in this book. One of the characters here, weighing up whether or not to verbalize something which will be 'mawkish' (as he feels it), decides on balance that this is what he has to do: and - although it is certainly mawkish - I too feel a need to express something of how this elegant and supremely stylish book haunts me.
A very great deal of the book is about the show more perilous balance between the risks of expressing our emotion and of letting it be held in: and the ways in which Hanya Yanagihara crafts the emotionality of her narrative repeatedly to surge and break apart is a masterfully managed crashing, crushing tide.
The book is exquisitely written, almost flawless through its whole first half, and only periodically flagging after that: one character - Caleb - made me wince; but although his moral weight lies heavily over the second half of the book, it is only his (very) brief appearance 'in the flesh' which seemed to me to be - I have to say it - lazy. The pacing of the book is spot on; and the way in which it brings us in the space of a few dozen words to the teetering brink of the abyss, and does so time again, is stunning.
Hanya Yanagihara has let it be known that she did not want this to be a book which is about 'Church' (nor is it): but the sins of church folk are at its core; and the closest this novel gets to salvation is far outside the scope of any religious kind of faith. St Paul can say that 'love never ends' (who knows? - he may be right): but the appalling and terrible truth which is the subject of this devastating book is that love - by far - is not enough. show less

A Little Life ripped my guts and spit them out with burning tears. You will be unable to fully realize how life altering this novel by Hanya Yanagihara will be upon completion. Do not be intimidated by the over seven-hundred-page length. The novelist tricks you into thinking the story will center around the four college roommates introduced at the beginning. You’ll soon realize that Jude’s story will take you on a journey unparalleled in the canon of great literature.

This book. Jesus. Jesus. I listened to it on audiobook while taking walks through the woods, but also read it in physical form at home. This is not an easy, happy go lucky book at all. But the writing is beautiful and it crushed me. What a book.

The backstory of Jude was intense, but I could handle it. What got to me the most, was the present day. Jude struggling with himself, feeling ashamed, being loved by so many, yet always feeling a burden to everyone. Always haunted by his past demons. Not knowing how to be able to share his past with the people he loved, because he felt so dirty and ashamed.

I loved Willem. I loved Harold. I even, despite some other reviewers, loved that fact that in the present, Jude was good at a lot of things. show more It made a stark contrast, but also showed that you can be talented, have everything and yet it means nothing when you are haunted by your past.

There's a lot more I want to say about this book, but I find it hard to order my thoughts. But what an intense book. One that will stay with me for a long time, and a book that, for the first time in years, really made me love reading again. show less

If you only read one chunkster of a book this year (or hell, only one book this year), please, please, make it A Little Life. This book is a brick of emotion, beautifully rendered and utterly heartbreaking. You will cry multiple times but you will be left with the memory of a story that makes you wonder at why people can be so cruel and how important the love of friends is. Please don’t be put off by it being on the Man Booker Prize longlist either – this is not a book that fits the stereotype of prize lists, it is a book that everyone should read and is entirely readable. (If it doesn’t win the Man Booker, I am going to be terrifically disappointed).

The premise of A Little Life is simple – the story of four friends who all show more move to New York after finishing college/graduate school, following them throughout their lives. There’s JB, a talented artist who is also a little too big for his boots. Malcolm is an architect, unsure of what path to take in life at the risk of upsetting his family. Willem is going to be an actor – he’s had it tough growing up but he’s determined to make it. Then there’s Jude.

Oh, Jude.

You will love Jude. Jude is somewhat of an enigma to the others, but they all protect him fiercely. He’s a little different, a little younger than the others and never says anything about his past. He always wears long sleeved and is scared to get too close. But he is utterly brilliant and completely lovable. Jude suffers from a terrific lack of self-esteem and self-worth, something his friends try to help him with not very successfully. Jude is truly a good man, yet so many horrible things have happened to him that you can’t help but being angry at the terrible injustice. Jude’s friends help him when he’s in the grip of terrible physical pain from a car accident and try to show him he’s loved to heal his spiritual wounds. Little by little over the course of the book, the reader finds out about Jude’s past. It’s not pretty, it’s disgustingly awful. You will be angry and you will cry. The injustice of it all will leave you reeling.

Despite the pain of this book, the sadness and cruelty that seeps through its pages, you will not be able to put it down. I can’t explain it. Many horrible, ugly cry scenes appear in this book, yet it is compulsive reading. Despite the size, the story is not too long nor padded out. It’s just right. It is a dense, intense read but every word is lovingly crafted and the writing is just beautiful. It’s a masterpiece. Hanya Yanagihara has made something beautiful from horrifying events and it’s like an f-you to the bad people out there. You can be loved, you can be a worthy person.

If only Jude thought so.

The book moves from JB’s head to Willem’s and then Jude’s. It’s the parts that are written from Jude’s perspective that are the most mesmerising. I think they are important as we can see his reasoning (however flawed) that he’s not worthy of life and love. It’s interesting that we never see into Malcolm’s head – perhaps because he has had the most stable, loving life out of the four but he’s also the blandest. The other characters are richly detailed down to the colour of their socks, but Malcolm is more of background character, briefly sketched. It doesn’t detract from the story at all, I just found it an interesting point. The only thing I didn’t really like about A Little Life is the US cover because – it’s heartbreaking and the picture reminds me of Jim Carrey. I like the Australian cover much better.

The story is brutal, full of trigger warnings but it’s ultimately rewarding as after finishing it you feel stronger, like you’ve survived something. Hanya Yanagihara is a master of fiction writing and quite possibly the creator of the Great American Novel. Read it.

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