A Little Life

Wrecked. 

Alright. This book......

This book is why I love reading as much as I do. It was hard to read, yet at the same time, so rewarding. I did not want it to end, I sometimes could not continue reading despite wanting to so bad at the same time, paradoxically enough. The essence of life is captured in this book almost flawlessly; life is awful, it is hard, it is chaotic. However, Yanagihara knows and shows the reader that it is the smallest things, whether it is a friend, a walk, a person, a hug, that matter. They are what make the chaos a bit more bearable.

This book is for everyone, and I will say that for the rest of my life. It captures the essence of not only life, but also of friendship and relationships: this book is more than a modern classic. It is relatable on so many level. Things we think but don't say are captured, how hard and complicated friendships can be, how hard it is to be honest with oneself, and so much more. I can go on for hours and I have so much to say that I don't even know what to say right now.

Yanagihara possesses a skill not many have. Absolutely in awe by this book: 10000/10

One of the most difficult books that I have ever read. Gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, and definitely not for faint-hearted.

Все ясно. Автору ноль лет.

This is the only book I've ever read where any rating of it would be completely justified.

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.

3/5 - Undoubtedly beautifully written, completely devastating and harrowing story. However, definitely could have been about 100 pages shorter, aspects of the book felt repetitive and unnecessarily long. Not sure A Little Life is something I would go about recommending to everyone due to it being a heavy slog of a read, but if you think you're up for it give it a go!

there is a lot to say about this book. there are things that worked for me, and things that didn't, and i get both the praise and the criticism. and before i go into this, i will clarify that i really did like A Little Life, and i did get attached to the characters, and i did find it hard to put down. but here goes.
i read this book at what i feel was the perfect time: as i neared my 18th birthday. and although the lives of the characters span across many, many years, i never felt that they were much older than me, twenty-something at most (which to me was a flaw in the writing). i have also been thinking an awful lot lately, and the book didn't help. in fact, it made me think even more, a scary amount. it also made me cry twice.

however, and this is a point that is important to make with A Little Life: i don't feel that a book is good just because it does a good job making the reader cry. and this book in particular, in my opinion, relies too much on this. i've seen somewhere that Hanya Yanahigara wanted to write a character so broken that they were beyond being fixed, and sure, for that a character would have to suffer, but as you add one traumatic experience and then another and then another, at some point it becomes almost ridiculous. we are just faced with the fact that every single person Jude had encountered until a certain point in his life has been an evil pedophile rapist, with absolutely no exception, and now he will never get better, no matter how loved he is. his sorrow is so enormous that it pushes almost every other character out of focus, and the ones that we still see are shaped by how that sorrow affects them. all we see is his self-harm and self-hatred, to a point where is becomes too much.

curiously, this is the second book i've read recently that people have criticised for being too grim, the first being Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. and that book, in my opinion, is just as grim as it should be. there is trauma, and pain, but it serves a purpose, and it tells a story. in A Little Life, however, the pain felt like an exhausting rollercoaster meant only to emotionally manipulate the reader, and when things finally get better you don't feel relieved, because deep down you already know that eventually, probably very soon, they'll get worse again, because in this story, nothing is ever truly good, and no one is ever truly happy, and everyone dies, and therapy doesn't work, and suicide is the only way out. we never see the characters grow, or change, or become better people. this book a lot like Jude himself, too stubborn to actually want to get better, but that is disguised by the notion that there are people who are “too broken to be fixed”.

i would like to end the review on this:
apparently, Hanya Yanahigara is anti-therapy, and yet A Little Life was the best ad for therapy i've ever encountered.

¿Cómo narices se supera este libro? Creo que ningún libro me ha hecho ni me hará sentir lo que este libro ha conseguido. No sé ni cómo hacerle una review la verdad. Simplemente wow. Sin duda se ha convertido en uno de mis libros favoritos.

PD: si me dieran un euro por cada vez que he llorado ahora mismo sería millonaria.

3.5 stars

I'm sorry! The writing is very good, but the bucket of shit that turns into a truckload of shit that turns into a river of shit dumped all over that character, who at that point is already drowning in a veritable ocean of shit... it just became so surreal I started laughing out loud, and I was lost to the book - or it to me. I still think of Jude sometimes, but it's always in terms of "that poor character that had a horrible experiment done to him by that writer".

DNF
It has been over a year since i last touched this book and in all honesty i did really think i would read it last year but alas. I think i got to like page 80 or something then was like, fuck this book, and never touched it since. I have read plenty of reviews on this book, both good and bad, but i just have to think this book sucks. As one of my fave ppl i follow on goodreads, (säid, i think), said, this book is just tourture porn. I do eventually want to try and finish it but for now, ta-ta.

This is easily the best book I will never recommend to anyone. It was so real and vivid and beautifully written, but also intensely difficult to get through. The events that take place are so painful for the characters and so graphic in their description that I felt viscerally uncomfortable. While I understand they are supposed to be difficult and supposed to be painful, I also don't think it is something everyone needs to read nor should read. However, this book is so well-written and so human that it took my breath away. I read for hours on end, feeling deeply invested in the lives and traumas of these characters. Their thought processes, decisions, feelings, and actions were so thoroughly explained and described that each character felt so real. I loved this book, but it was also one of the most upsetting and depressing reading experiences. It's not an easy experience to explain.

5/5 • “He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.”

There are multiple characters' lives that were depicted in “A Little Life” that I will go on to remember, mourn and take with me for many years to come. The way Hanya Yanagihara displayed the characters and their life events made me feel as if I knew each and everyone of them personally. Would recommend this book to anyone that wants to cry until their face feels numb!

For the Read Harder Challenge #9, Read the book that's been on your TBR the longest. What a slog, which is probably the reason it's been on my TBR forever. Did not like it at all.

There are many things I wish this book had covered, especially concerning all the people surrounding Jude, but I'm still enamored by the story it decided to tell and the empathy and sympathy it was able to drain from me. A truly heartbreaking book.

yeah there are things about this book that are probably very bad but sometimes you appreciate seeing reflected how fucked up it feels to feel so fucked up

i admire ms. yanagihara for being able to write a book like this but i also question her well-being

This has left me feeling emotionally obliterated. At times I could have rated this 5 stars and at other times it was so infuriating it could easily have been 1 star. I would recommend this to no one, I have no more words

So, I had to wait for a few days before writing a review just because I had a lot of emotions and needed some distance before I could think about my opinions on the book.

I was unsure whether to read it in the first place, firstly because I new that it would be heartbreaking (it is) and secondly because some people consider it to be ???traumap*rn???, meaning the topics are just triggering and sad and depressing for the shock factor and do not have literary value.

I will address this point first, because personally I did not feel that way at all. Jude, our main protagonist is a physically disabled man that faced a lot of trauma as a child and teenager and now as an adult has to cope with it. Sometimes it is not pretty, his story is not ???empowering??? in the sense that he overcomes all his struggles and then goes on TED talks.
Instead it is raw and heartwrenching and frustratingly unfair. This story is about a person who fights everyday for the smallest relief, for just a bit of love and happiness.

And he finds them in his friends and loved ones who never stop believing in him. But sometimes, it is just not enough and your demons still find you.

I feel like - and this comes from a place of love - if someone cannot empathize with this struggle they probably are very lucky and healthy people.

I also want to adress that in my opinion this story is also a cautionary tale about a broken health and juridical system where abused children do not get the help that they need and are left to their own devices. I do not share the author???s opinion that ???some people are too broken for therapy???, but I will say that it gets harder the longer you do nothing.

Lastly I will say: before you read this book please mind the trigger warnings, they are necessary and if your mental health is not at its best right now, maybe skip this one. If you do read it, I think you will find beautiful prose and beautiful people who just try their best.

4.75/5 (rounded up)

This book has been the subject of significant controversy, with readers either absolutely loving it or absolutely hating it which of course, made me decide to take it on as a challenge. I personally really liked this book.

I have heard many people, especially book reviewers on Youtube, say this book is too horrific and disturbing to read at all and I would have to disagree. I'm convinced that those who are encouraging people not to read it because it is too disturbing to even imagine are people who have never experienced the SERIOUS mental illness that Jude does. This is not to say that they have not had mental health struggles, just that they have not experienced the thought processes and mindset that Jude did in this novel.

As someone who has had some of the same thoughts about myself as Jude did in this book, it made me feel, frankly, a little less crazy. Many of the things he said, no matter how sad and horrific, are things that I have thought before and it really made me feel seen and that there are others who struggle in a similar manner. Though I've never experienced anything close to the trauma Jude did, I definitely feel empathy for the things he was thinking and saying.

This book is definitely disturbing, difficult to read and heart-breaking but that does not mean it should not be read and experienced by people. It is not a book for everyone, that is for sure, but don't let other readers deter the intrigue you have to read this book.

CHECK THE TRIGGERS WARNINGS BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY. But this is a great book, a little slow at times which is my only reason for knocking off a star because it is a very long book, but an understanding one for many of us who struggle with serious mental illness.

I bought “A Little Life” in grad school because the Discourse said I should read it. I put off doing so because I worried about it being little more than self-indulgent misery porn stretched out to operatic length. Yes, it is long. Yes, the prose tends to a dangerous shade of violet. Yes, the subject material can turn even the most calloused reader's stomach. What elevated this novel beyond mere schlock is its refusal to pity or rationalize its characters, particularly the protagonist. It allows Jude's trauma to exist without rationalization. Yet the book is not without beauty. Unsurprisingly for a story populated by artists and intellectuals, it is one of the most unabashedly aesthetic novels I have read recently. “A Little Life” is drama pitched in a high and tragic key: unforgiving, compelling, occasionally transcendent.

Every once in awhile I'll read a book where I don't really understand the praise it has received. Typically even if I think a book's not for me, I can understand why it's well regarded. This is a case though where I don't get it. The prose is nice albeit long winded at times and I feel like Yanagihara has done a decent job capturing some of the behaviors that may be exhibited by people who have been abused. Some of the content is for sure heartbreaking and even I shed some tears.

Yet, I dislike this book considerably because of how sensationalist it is. How exaggerated aspects of it are and how contrived the story is. I couldn't help but feel as a I read it that Jude was suffering just for the sake of suffering. To me, it actually began to feel like the author was reveling in said suffering. I don't believe every story needs an uplifting message, but if your characters are going to go through trauma it does need to feel organic and that is where I think this novel fails as it comes off as very emotionally manipulative imo.

It's too bad, because there is a great novel in there under the mountain of melodrama.

This is one of the best books that I've ever read. It is deeply, deeply unsettling and painful to read—tragic and depressing. Yet, I found myself unable to put it down. The writing is engrossing and at times poetic. Not for the faint of heart or someone looking for escapism.

Rating: 3.13 leaves out of 5-Characters: 3.5/5 -Cover: 4/5-Story: 3/5-Writing: 2/5Genre: Fiction/Contemporary/LGBTType: BookWorth?: YesTrigger Warnings: Rape, Abuse, Child Abuse, Grooming, Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide, Ableism, Pedophilia, RacismHated Disliked It Was Okay Liked Loved FavoritedHow do you rate trauma? You simply don't, but you can rate it based on how it is written. I am going to get a basic rating and review done before going below and doing one with spoilers. What I liked about this book, something that will probably stick with me for many years, is how awful humans can be towards each other. The list of trigger warnings is unbelievably long. To actually get through it was rough. I expected more crying out of this book but I found myself just straight up angry. I cried twice while reading and about 5-10 minutes after everything hit me all at once and I cried. Literally cried myself to sleep.So why such a low rating? I blame that one on Hanya. The way the story was written was almost unbearable. YOU, reader, had to search who the hell was talking at the time. You have to figure out what timeline you are in and randomly you will be switched from 3rd person to 1st and lets add a little 2nd person in the mix. It was just a headache.Another reason for such a low rating was really because the length of the book wasn't needed. You can tell (because I tabbed) where I just lost interest. I could careless, in a way, to be bothered to stop and highlight and tab. There were a lot of USELESS information and lot of the time things were dreadfully dragged out. Honestly, I almost DNFed the book because of how god awful boringly long and annoying the read was. I was literally at a point where I wanted to set the book on fire and be done with it. And the summary of the book? Makes you honestly think the book is about one thing but it isn't.That being said, the fact that I had such an emotional response to the book saved the book from being a 1 or 2 star. A lot of the characters are unlikable, even the ones you are suppose to like(I believe?). With that being said, I will contain spoilers down below.SPOILER REVIEW!...........It can be a tricky write when it comes to such a heavy topic. You want to express the dire hurt and numbness of the situation while also not being too overbearing. From the beginning I loved Jude. Jude was someone you would have gone to jail for. Willem, kind of the same but it was the kind of man who had no backbone, for the most part. JB? I honestly hated him for majority of the book and the 2nd half he kind of redeemed himself but I wouldn't call him a friend still. Malcolm... ahhh he was as forgettable as they come. I honestly had forgotten him by the end of the book which was sad because he dies at the end as well. To be more in depth I will start with each character and speak about them.Malcolm: I felt bad for the guy who blends into the background. It was clear he didn't know who he was, even towards the end. In the beginning of the book he is trying to figure out who he is, where he stands in society, and if he is sexually attracted to anyone at all. I didn't get a clear image of him. He supposidly liked Willem and then... came out only to end up marrying a woman? And nothing is ever clear on what exactly happened to him except for he married a woman and both died with Willem in a car accident. For how the book was described I was disappointed that he was fleshed out more. Hanya got lazy with him and it showed big time. For how big the book was you'd expect him to have his character come to a final conclusion but I guess she wanted us to be as confused as he was about himself, maybe I am giving her too much credit.JB: By god did I want to trip him down the stairs for most of the book. I thought he, besides the rapist and pedos, would be the most hated in the book but I was so damn wrong. So very very wrong. I ended up feeling bad for him towards the end of the book. He was made into the man he was no thanks to his parents. It isn't an excuse for him being racist and at times misgendering people. He didn't care who he hurt as long as he got what he wanted. When it came to JB he seemed an extra kind of hurtful but he made a very good point and called out Jude when he needed to but he did it in a way that made me cringe so hard. Making fun of someone's disabilities isn't funny and he knew in the end, once sober, that it was a major mistake. JB had a way of being an ableist and racist, but I believe he changed in the end.Harold This man is a good man and I wish I could have had him as a father. He adored Jude and adopting him was the sweetest thing. Was so pissed at Jude for how he treated him. Andy: I adored him and I am glad he called Jude out on his bullshit. Willem Boy oh boy where do I start with him. I really liked him at first, I mean I still did even at the end, and I still did but maybe a little towards the end. Willem was the sweet actor who seemed more like a brother than anything. He never took relationships seriously and after 20+ years of being friends with Jude, which we all realized way earlier, that he was in love with the man. I felt bad because honestly I would have dropped Jude, or not been so close to him, YEARS ago. To be in Willem's shoes and try your hardest with a man who rather sit in his own shit... was hard. In the end though Willem died in a car accident and I cried so hard. Not for Jude nor for Willem's actual death, but because he got to meet his brother in the afterlife and... it stabbed my heart. Jude Now to him. I felt bad for him growing up. Living in a monastery that I am sure was freaking Catholics. I cannot explain the hate I have for them, but anyway. He is there with some pedos and ends up being groomed by one just to be taken and used as a prostitute. After the man is caught he is brought to a home where he is then raped more by counselors. He escapes and uses sex as a way to get to Boston when he gets taken by a Dr. Taylor in Philadelphia when he got sick. Dr. Taylor rapes him till he gets tired of Jude and then has him running for his life before being ran over. I don't know the statistics of... something like this basically happening back to back but by god was it a fucking mental ride to get through. I felt so damn bad. Then we speak up to him in his 30s and finally gets a boyfriend who is an abusive fuck, named Caleb. I wished the worst death on this man (and all the others who hurt Jude.) I want to say it was unrealistic for things to happen back to back to back... but... I don't know for sure so I won't. As far as him being an adult... Jude frustrated me to the point where I didn't care too much about him or what he did in his life. He didn't want help and kept cutting even though he knew how much he was hurting the people he loved. I don't think a lot of people realized that Jude mentally was fucking up Willem. How can you help someone who doesn't want to be helped NOR wants to open up to him. I get that he was scared but the amount of years this man has been with him and Jude still treated him like a stranger in a way... it was... annoying as hell. Sometimes you just have to leave people like that and say what happens happens. No one's life should be someone else's responsibility if they can live life normally (or as normal as Jude is).

I'm really sad. That's it.