A Little Life
Ratings562
Average rating4.1
This book's a real tearjerker! As other reviewers said though, in parts it might feel forced. I don't mind heavy subject matters, but this would have gotten 5 stars from me only if some of the heaviness was better balanced. E.g. maybe some of Jude's heavy struggles could've been replaced with another character's POV having more defined ups and downs.
I get that the point is to emphasise how isolated Jude feels with his big problems compared to his friends' 'normal' problems, but that concept didn't need to be taken to the extremes that it was. After a point it really was numbing and just piling on struggles didn't add to the emotional impact anymore.
things i liked:
1. beautifully written
2. good representation
things i didn't like:
1. so much shit happened in Jude's childhood, maybe a little too much, made me a bit numb
2. plateaued a little in the middle of the book. while i understand it's meant to be more detail-oriented, it needed a little bit of more momentum from the story line.
3. i just wish Jude was a little bit less self-pitying
4. it felt a little feminine, maybe because it was written by a female author. she didn't understand the male psyche well enough (in my personal opinion)
“Life is so sad. It's so sad, and yet we'll do it. We all cling to it; we all search for something to give us solace.”
4.5 I think???? Maybe.
Non-spoilers: The writing of this book is beautiful, but it has some parts that seemed unnecessary to elongate the story where it didn't really have to. Once knowing the focus characters and incidents, it's easy to skim over parts that didn't connect too much to the story. The synopsis of the book threw me off, as it is true, but the centerpiece of the story is slightly off from it, particularly regarding the friends. I was more frustrated and angry with many of the parts of the story, shocking images of all that's happened.
Spoilers: I was so angry at Jude throughout the entire book because he refused therapy, the idea of "I deserve this", and rejection of help for the majority of the book. But now with the ending, I'm not sure what to feel. How do you even feel after that? All the anger poofed after Willem's death; the most impacting moment for me was when Jude imagined himself with Willem's arms around him, the sandalwood scent on his clothes that eventually faded, desperately trying to conserve and save it in the closet. Can I think about sandalwood the same way before I read the book? Probably not. I feel that pretty much everything in this book is all unfortunate things that happen in life. It's so sad, yet we do it. It's so painful, yet we resort to dark thoughts and pain. Can we help people? Yeah. Can we try to fix someone? As much as we want to, people won't accept, won't see how much you care, won't give in. And that's reality sometimes.Edit: After some discussion in the BLC, it's understandable that Jude didn't want to accept therapy because he didn't want to expose himself and relive everything of the past. It seemed easier just to keep it in. It's still just heartbreaking that nothing would, will, and can heal someone like Jude.
Read this a couple months ago and just had to get through the last couple tens of pages. The book is...a lot; you have four characters, and in the beginning it feels confusing because you can't keep track of all of them. Eventually, you keep focus on two of them, while one has episodic appearances and the other one is literally there just to design the others' apartments; I would've loved to see Malcom join the others a lot more, because otherwise this feels like a three friends and another person scenario rather than the four friends that share a deep bond type thing that the synopsis indicated. I've honestly picked up this book because I have heard many individuals talk about how this book made them bawl so hard, so I had to check it out. While the few chapters that talk about Jude's past experiences are considerably graphic and can be triggering to some individuals, I can't but feel that the author has diluted the level of seriousness that the scenes should have had; throughout the book, all the characters want to know things about Jude's past and it is always described as something horrific and gruesome, and as such, you have this sensation that the author couldn't control themselves to keep the twist and secret for the end and left little bits across the book to sort of keep you involved.
Leaving that aside, the book is realistic; the characters are vivid and their relationships are similar to those that adults have in real life. The progression is believable, and the book correctly describes how one should act and behave with a friend that has a troubled past. It might be just the fact that I have read them after a couple of months and while I was reading something completely different, but the last twenty pages really saved the book and brought it from questionably mediocre to a decent contemporary novel.
Wonderfully and beautifully, if not perfectly, written. Given the negativity around this book I was expecting a lot....more than what I got. While the ending is almost hilariously cruel, so is life. Life often makes me think that God proves His existence through His hate and our suffering. What I see is a bleak, fragment of a very real life, and a life that people have lived. And examples of very real sexualities, friendships, and relationships. People seem upset that the mains were not “gay”, or labeled. They were just human...and lived a life like humans do. And some people get abused, and some people get the short stick, and time does not heal all wounds.
Lamentablemente, no creo que vaya a poder lidiar con este libro para antes de que acabe el año. Tal vez en un tiempo le de una oportunidad.
Now, I don't ever write reviews. Usually, I'm more than content to sit back in my chair and reduce a book to the number of stars I give it. Whatever my opinions on any particular book may be, someone's already probably written about it much more articulately than I could have ever hoped, and to a much larger audience, besides.
Sometimes, though, a book will incite such strong feelings in me that I don't feel like a one star rating would suffice. No, I have to sit down on my ass and ramble at the uncaring void of the internet, why, exactly it is that I absolutely, passionately, ardently despise a book.
Oh, man. This book. It's not that I wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters or that the writing was absolutely horrendous–quite the contrary! The writing was gorgeous, and the characters–though they felt insufferable, at times–I grew to like. But, Jesus Christ, can anyone in this goddamn book catch a break? The first few times anything bad ever happened, I felt sad. And then bad things just kept happening. And happening. And happening. And happening.
Listen, I get tragedy. I get sad endings and bad things happening. However, when an entire book is literally just one gigantic sobfest piled on top of another sobfest, like it doesn't know how to evoke any other emotion in a reader other than absolute soul-crushing sadness, you really have to stop and think. What frustrates me most is that every now and then, I caught glimpses of something this book could have been. Something well and truly beautiful. But all of it was overshadowed by the ‘hey, let's make something bad happen to this character, again, for the sixtieth time, and make you feel bad.' Also, there's something to be said about how badly all of the gay characters here are treated but if I start on that I'm going to burst a vein or something, and I am not going to die over a book this bad.
Anyways, if tragedy porn is your thing, go ahead!
Een boek als een achtbaan. Bijzin, na steeds iets langere bijzin, word je het verhaal ingezogen, en net als je denkt even adem te kunnen halen schiet je weer wat verder de diepte in. Dan herinner je je één van die bijzinnen en realiseer je je dat er nog een stuk geschiedenis verborgen ligt onder het oppervlak, en dat je nog verder de diepte in kan (en zult) gaan. Te lang ongelezen laten liggen. Minpuntje is wel dat iedereen wel erg succesvol en gelukkig is (op Jude na dan), maar misschien verkeer ik gewoon in de verkeerde kringen :-)
The most vital exploration of trauma and it's impact on one's life I've read. I've owned three separate copies of this book.
Due to its sometimes quite nauseating content it's not for everyone but those who it is for, it REALLY is for.
First, this author uses a strange (and which I consider sloppy) literary device: they changes characters without specifying them by name. A new paragraph/chapter/section will just start talking about “he” and “him” and the reader has to guess between four, then five main male characters who “he” is.
Also, once before I stopped reading, the POV radically changes and “he” starts talking to the reader. What?
Second, this novel blatantly and loudly fails the Bedchel test. Women flit in and out, never to be seen again, only known as this person's lesbian friend or that person's coworker. The one long-standing female character exists to be a wife, and never has s conversation about anything but her husband or the main focus of the novel, the wounded main-child. All the women are two-dimensional props.
Which brings me to the main reason I cannot finish this novel:
Third, I truly feel this novel fetishizes/glorifies (choose your verb) trauma, self-harm, and resulting toxic behavior and relationships. I say this as someone with CPTSD and currently in CPTSD immersion therapy, someone who is chronically ill with an autoimmune disorder and who has to use a wheelchair in public. The behaviors that draw people inexplicably to Jude—violent self-harm over years, egregious medical self-neglect, strict and seemingly random friendship rules (don't ask questions about x y z, don't take my photograph, I need to be checked on twice a day or Bad Things Might Happen)—are personality-disordered behaviors that in real life either drive people away or create horribly toxic relationships.
Granted, both Andy and Jude so far seem to understand that their relationship is both inappropriate and toxic, but Jude has this dreamy ideal vision of his rescue-victim friendship with Willem...and Willem seems to think it's completely normally to be living only half a life because the other half is being sucked up by Jude's ever-growing needs. And what bothers me is this doesn't feel like storytelling—I have read many, many well-crafted novels about horrific relationships. It feels to me as reader that the writer feels this is normal, or that this is fantasy-fulfillment to the writer. I know I am getting rather personal in this review, but this novel has upset me in a most uncomfortable way, to the point that I may need to discuss it in therapy. There is something wrong here. I wish I could flush the 33 percent I have read from my system.
i'll probably never read this book (i want to but i'm terrified), even though @ray is practically forcing me to. it has 150+ trigger warnings!!! 150+!!!!
edit: just watched a few reading vlogs and i'm definitely not brave enough to read this. ever.
A little life is messed up and incredibly unrealistic placing the main character through every bad thing imaginable, this book prives on others pain, almost as if written for no other purpose but to utterly destroy you, leaving you filled with nothing but bad memories and feelings in the worst possible way, no one could possibly genuinely enjoy this book, I don't understand why it has such high ratings when it's only purpose is to cause pain.
“A Little Life” is easily one of the most scarring and depressing books I have ever read.
It deserves every trigger warning one can conjure up.
Yet, the writing is beautiful. I ended up devouring this book (only took a break when I had to go to work).
One insignificant issue I have with this book is on its marketing, it is sold as a story about 4 friends (Jude, Willem, Malcolm and JB) and how their friendship has evolved through the decades.
But honestly, it is only about 2 friends (Jude and Willem) and we, as readers, rarely get to experience Malcolm's and JB's pov.
I think I'm glad I read this book? but I would never ever recommend it to anyone.
A Little Life is een intens, hartverscheurend en prachtig geschreven boek. Yanagihara speelt met tijd en perspectief—je beseft vaak pas na een paar pagina's waar en wanneer je je bevindt, wat perfect past bij de thematiek van herinnering en trauma.
Centraal staat Jude, een briljante maar gebroken man wiens verleden hem blijft achtervolgen. Je denkt soms dat het niet erger kan, maar dan bewijst Yanagihara het tegendeel. Toch zit er, tussen alle pijn en duisternis, ook liefde en hoop—in vriendschappen, in kleine gebaren, in de momenten waarop iemand Jude probeert te redden, zelfs als hij zichzelf allang heeft opgegeven.
Het laat een onuitwisbare indruk achter. Een van de meest aangrijpende boeken die ik ooit heb gelezen, waarbij ik het einde met tranen in mijn ogen heb gelezen.
there are a lot of things I wish I could take from this book and engrave into my brain as a keepsake for the rest of my life. often times throughout the story I wondered why we centred around jude so much and I found myself almost wishing his trauma wasn't so heavily emphasised, but I always knew—and the book always implied—that jude is the story. a little lifetime of healing and breaking and sacrifice and injustice and laughter and horror and tears, tears, tears. I can't remember any other time I've properly cried at the ending of a book, but good god did I weep at those final lines. ZERO NOTES MISS HANYA
at about the halfway point i knew i was going to rate this book 1 star. it took a while to get how I feel now and felt reading this straightened out into words. so for now these are my immediate thoughts:
it is incredibly ironic that this book purports to be a looking glass into the worst of human nature when the author has made up these characters and experiences basically from scratch with no research into real victims and how trauma recovery actually works. the fact that it follows four men, three of which are queer and two of which are black, just feels so icky. like at no point does it feel that these stories and characters exist in the real world. besides the fact that their environments feel hollow, we get almost no depth from these men after they enter their thirties. i was actually astounded by the fact that once i started reading about them in their 50s i realized that at no point had the characters actually matured. i went back to read bits from when they were in their early 20s and their voices are the same, their thought processes are the same and their problems are the same. willem is beautiful and naive, malcolm becomes an almost ghostlike character with no agency other than ‘build beautiful house', JB stays a tortured artist and jude. god poor jude.
i can't say enough about how painful it was to exist inside his head. an unbelievably smart and kind person who at no point in this entire book think he is ever worthy of being treated other than a piece of garbage to be used and abused by everyone around him. it is sickening to be rendered a helpless bystander as jude is failed again and again and again by those closest to him. the people we are supposed to believe know and love him the best. i don't believe for a second that a DOCTOR and a PARENT and a SPOUSE and the alleged litany of friends we meet through the novel wouldn't have this man forcibly committed after decades of self harm and suicide attempts. besides the fact that they do stage an intervention nearly thirty years too late, i find it so hard to believe that we are expected to believe these people love jude.
i am no stranger to dark themes and topics being the focus of literature and media (hell one of my favorite shows is SVU) but to me the key element missing here (besides the fact that it very obviously entirely made up) is that there's no resolution. suffering and pain and disability and mental illness all happen without reason in the real world but that's just it. this book ISN'T real life. it pretends to be sure but it doesn't for a second feel like anything happening is real. horrible things do happen in real life but the extent to which we have to witness them in this book is almost laughable. at no point does anything in this book mean anything. showing suffering for the sake of the suffering CAN and HAS been done well in other media, however it has always meant something. whether to show the cruelty and darkest parts of humanity or to show the resilience of the human spirit. at every twist and turn i was just screaming WHY WHY WHY.
if i could give this book less that one star i would. it's only and i mean ONLY saving grace is the formatting. i like the non linear story telling, the structure of the parts and chapters and how we follow the characters throughout their entire adult lives. the writing at times is so beautiful that it hurts and other times it's so self absorbed that i giggled in disbelief. it is too long tho, this could have been 200 pages shorter at least. in fact this book should be 0 pages lmfao.
This was a tough read. To begin with I had trouble relating to the characters inability to “see” each other, and that made the first quarter of the book a bit challenging. Judes story being a really tough one to digest makes you also think (imo) that the concrete details of his story don't matter, but it's how his support failed him time and time again when it should have been there for him.
It was a heart wrenching novel from start to finish and despite agreeing that at times it goes too deep into “misery porn territory” I do think it uses it in a way to discuss very strong themes such as life, death, grief and love (of all kinds).
I do feel the book could have also been edited to around 500-600 pages.
I want to start off by saying I haven't read a single other book that has read the way this book does. I feel as if it hit this emotion, this way of reading and understanding the world that no other book dared to dive into.
I have seen other people critique this book because it all occurs in 2014 even thought it spans over 40 ish years. I get that, but to me, that doesn't take away from the message or the way I felt about this book. I don't need there to be historical references, I am reading this book for the philosophy and thought provoking ideas. I think she did an amazing job of making me think about how someone who went through the expeirences Jude did, thinks, feels, and utlimately what is right for him.
I will say, I don't think the book had to be as long as it was. I didn't mind it, but as someone who is a little less of a literary fanatic, I thought describing every scene with excruitating detail was over the top for me, as I was reading this book for the philosophy and ideas.
I cannot put into words how important this book was for me to read, I feel as if a lot of my thoughts I have about life were questioned in this book (not necessarily answered), and just seeing this type of ideaology written out into a story felt so different and fresh than any other book I read.
The themes of this book are not for everyone, but I think the questions she asks are extremely powerful and important ones.