A Little Life

I was torn about this book. A lot of the claims that it's “trauma porn” and one of those “gay torture” books threw me from reading it for a long time. I waited until I felt a bit more comfortable reading it and was surprised to find that I really only considered one aspect of this book to be belonging in the “indulgent trauma pity party” and that is the cutting. Jude has many many many scenes of him cutting and the are sometimes too long. This is really the only thing that irked me about this book.

The way this book is talked about I was prepared to read rape scenes, but this is spared from the reader. While there are lots and lots of mention and talk of rape, sexual violence and abuse it is not forthright with the descriptions, often it's factual and short. There is also a ladder that we climb as we read, the higher we go the more the skyline of Judes past makes sense and begins to fit together.

For those who say that Judes abuse is too “spectacular” fuck you. For those who say that his friends and loved ones made the wrong decisions regarding his health, yes they did but have you ever been put into that position? It's a very terrible position to be in. My one true gripe with these characters, for how smart and talented they are all supposed to be, is why none of them ever tried to get Jude to meet other sexual abuse victims?

One of my favorite scenes is where Harold is speaking to JB in the kitchen, JB is straightforward (as he always is) and tells Harold that him, Malcolm and Willem suspect that Jude was subjected to sexual abuse as a child. I expected this to really shift Jude's perspective or have him contemplate why his friends suspected, no, knew, this so easily of him. For him to realize that he must not be alone in his struggles.

Of course my favorite relationship in this book are Jude's three closest friends. Willem, JB and Malcolm. How it stretches and changes over time, the elastic bond of titanium that some people have to each other.

But most stunning is the language, the prose, and the overall writing. It's a novel meticulously strung together. My favorite bits, that were annoying at first, are the way characters are mentioned, but they come back. Most every name dropped circles around and around making a full web of life that our main cast inhabits. It's quite an impressive feat of character.