A Little Life
Ratings563
Average rating4.1
Devastating. But maybe the best book I've ever read. I've never seen the human condition captured so perfectly. Beautiful and tragic.
Enquanto lia este livro, ao longo destas últimas semanas, não conseguia parar de pensar nele. Agora que acabou, acho que nunca o vou esquecer.
Ps: crying a lot.
4.5 at some point it was just super dark and it felt like the author did it as a way to get a reaction out of reader. I kind of hate this book. pain.
This book had me bawling my eyes out at several points. It's a lamentation. A gratuitous stab to the heart.
But I wasn't convinced of Jude's utter hopelessness at the end and am actually pretty annoyed with how it resolved. However, given the uninterrupted torture of Jude's backstory, I really didn't expect anything different.
One sentence synopsis... ‘A Little Life' begins as a conventional postgrad New York ensemble but it quickly becomes evident Yanagihara has something much darker and unsettling in mind for her four unforgettable friends. .
Read it if you like... crying. Screaming at books. Simultaneously hating the author for putting her characters through this while also loving her for creating such an all-consuming story. Don't read it if you like happy endings. .
Dream casting... Robert Pattinson, Armie Hammer, or Garrett Hedlund as Willem Ragnarsson. John Boyega is the only JB. If anyone's read the book and has people in mind I'd love to know what you pictured.
TRIGGER WARNING: suicide attempts, cutting, explicit scenes.
REREAD 2021: I AM SO SAAAAAAAAAAD
Just by how long it took me to read this book we can guess how much I liked it. I feel like I finished the book equivalent of one of those tumblr posts romantizising mental illness and excusing people's horrible behavior because they're sick.
What's sad is I thought I was going to love this book. How wrong was I?
The author spent time to develop these characters and make you love them, just so that you can then be tortured by everything they went through.
And what was the point of all of this at the end? What are the conclusions we are supposed to draw?
It's all meant to twist your feelings just for the sake of twisting.
To me this book has no meaning worth spending the time and the mental energy. it just sucked all the way.
This book made me feel quite a few things, but mostly I was just grossed out and exhausted. I can see why a lot of people love it, but it wasn't for me. I didn't need graphic descriptions of things everyone already knows are wrong to feel bad for a character. I felt bad for him already. I liked the writing style but felt it could've been trimmed down by 100-200 pages.
3.5
This book makes me really want to discuss it with other people. The writing is beautiful and the detail the author finds in so many walks of life is fantastic. Everyone said it was sad and they weren't wrong, there are some sad parts, but overall I'd classify it as depressing more than sad.
How much trauma is enough to justify being a bad person? To not even want to be better even though you have the tools available to try and you're hurting all those around you by not doing it? I don't know, but this book made me think about it a lot.
The characters are interesting, the ‘privilege porn' is fun if a little on the nose. Seriously, all the main characters are ultra high functioning success stories, live in beautiful places and travel to stunning exotic locations as well as being super gifted both artistically and professionally with a deep knowledge of any high culture they can reel off at any time. This ain't a book about having to come to grips with not being good/rich/famous/smart enough.
Glad I read it, look forward to a spirited discussion about it with someone in the future.
Actually... 3 months on from forcing myself to finish this book. I cannot believe that I put myself through all 720 pages. This read like some kind of fucked up trauma-porn fanfiction: characters thrown around like dolls through the most unfortunate circumstances of life one second, and then made to kiss in their materially perfect lives the next.
Maybe that's the point and I simply don't get it, or don't like it. It felt pitying and unempathetic.
[ it's only appropriate that this is my first review as it's the first book that i started while on goodreads ]
i wanted to like this. i really did. it was recommended by a youtuber for someone looking for a book that helps with post-grad funk, but it helped very little with that. note: i listened to the audiobook rather than read a hard copy.
you can only suspend disbelief so much. while there are issues addressed in this book that do happen to people every day, it's unrealistic that the author prefaced 4 diverse and different friends but lumped all of the problems, trauma, and “bad stuff” onto one of those friends. as more traumatic events were added to this character's story, i found it harder and harder to hold interest.
this is a good book for someone looking to hear about a (very) fictional character's lifelong strife. this is not a good book for someone looking to perk up during a tough time.
Parts of the book were soul crushing, parts were disturbingly annoying. The story is great, the writing above average, I would give it 5 stars had it not been for the self-sabotaging behaviour of the main character. I get the traumatic past and all the demons that kept haunting him until the end, but the fact that none of his friends or family were doing something significant about it, that's what I don't get.
7/1/2024 - a little more review.
I used to hype this book so much. It took me years to barely get over at least half the shit that happened in this book. I held Jude so much in my arms, that I reread it– I was afraid to lose sight of him. Because it's still true. “And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.” these words are drilled into my fucking brain, I can't forget it. Just thinking about this book makes my heart break. At this point, I truly wish I hadn't read this book and didn't force myself to finish it, feel it, and be part of it. It's traumatizing and I stopped recommending this to people. Your life would be so much better without this book.
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If you're in the mood to get your heart broken, here's the book for you. The pain felt so real that even if you're in a happy place, it will drag you to your forlorn hole and feel bad for the rest of the month. This is hands down the best book I've read this year.
This has to be one of the most challenging books I've ever read. This is definitely not going to be everybody's cup of tea, and if you know a whiff of what this is about, then you'll know if you have the emotional stamina to withstand its narrative trials. I went to this with my eyes wide-open about it's potential triggering substance but also not fully aware of the encompassing nature and the jumps in time and perspective. I knew I'd enjoy this book for the same reason I enjoyed the last few literary contemporary novels, they follow a slice-of-life portrayal that allows the reader to get an in-depth look into the characters' background, mentality, and all the general life experiences that developed who they are. I find myself more and more riveted by books that are more a character-study than an actual story.
Speaking of characters, this book was overflowing with personalities and interpersonal relationships that began throughout various stages in each main character's (the main four friends) adult life, from college to just beyond mid-life. Jude's history, in particular, and his friends' reactions to Jude's coping behavior are the main focus of this book. The author slowly reveals everything about Jude's past that shape who he is as an adult and the characters around him only really get to see what he decides to show them. That was my biggest–and only–problem with the book: Jude didn't communicate effectively (which is honestly to be expected) but while I can't fault his friends' logic and hesitancy to push for more open communication and therapy early-on in the book, I really wish they had.
Overall, when it came to the characters, Willem and Harold were obviously my favorite. It's hard for them not to be everyone's favorite. Andy is definitely a close second, and if he had more screen time, he probably would have tied for first as well. It's the relationship that these characters have, not only with Jude (though that does provide the biggest piece of evidence) but with all the other characters that illustrates so deeply and sincerely their compassion for others and their unyielding love for themselves and others.
I love the writing, it's one of the best I've ever come across; not for its use of language necessarily, but how it's stream of consciousness is constructed and presented. When I initially started this book, it was immediately apparent that I wouldn't be able to read more than a small chunk (50 pages at most) of it at a time; however, once I reached the half-way mark, it picked up the pace. It's long-winded but in the best way.
The stream of consciousness in this book is almost better than what I would expect, to the point that I'm sure there might be a better descriptor of the writing style. But stream of consciousness for the most part encapsulates the narrative perfectly. The reason I think there might be a better descriptor is because the multiple character POV passages flip back and forth in time, and their perspectives are sometimes reflecting on the past. This reflection and introspection provided an insightful view of their lives and the impacts of the relationships they developed over the span of years with the other characters. I enjoyed getting a full picture of certain events but the story was not superfluous in the slightest. The one caveat I would say to that is the actual writing itself is something I had to get used to and called for many breaks while reading. Its run-on style did not allow for the reader to come to a natural stopping point.
I could not in good conscious recommend this to everybody, but if you've made it through the synopsis and my review of this and think this might sound like something you'd pick up, then I say go for it. You won't regret it.
It filled my heart with heavy emotions and made it break so many times during reading it, but it was worth it.
!! I just want to add a trigger warning for people sensitive to self harm, suicide and abuse. !!
Quite possibly the worst book I have ever read. But I did read the whole thing because it was almost unbelievably bad and I wanted to see if it might redeem itself. But no. It's florid and overwritten, with melodrama dripping from every page. The book sets an insurmountable record for the number of times the characters say “I'm sorry” to each other. They should be apologizing to the reader. There was almost nothing about the book that was even believable. It should have been titled “A Tedious Life.”
i put off reading this book for a long time because of all that i've heard of it, but ultimately it was beautiful and heart-rending. although it was long, it felt like the kind of story that i never wanted to end — and when it finally did, i still found myself yearning that “the happy years” had been longer. the prose was gorgeous, and while the subject matter was difficult it was never as graphic as i thought it would be.
Struggles presented as universal take on a quality of mocking delusion when the excess of protagonists (only male voices) all become famous millionaires at the top of their fields who own fabulous and plural homes and have access to private jets and Alhambra strolls. The decided main character also has riches in an expansive circle of equally jet-setting friends who over the span of decades never give up on him despite constant vehement testing-our-friendship pushback. We're told they remain devoted and compassionate yet none ever actually do rudimentary research on how to, if not guide him to knowledgeable help, talk to him and make steps to reposition the thinking and identity of a friend who has lived through extremities of harm. The glamour and American dreaming has its counterbalance in a childhood filled with horrors heaped on horrors of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse.
On the length, some expert editing could have kept out:
- White-adjacent ‘post-racial' musings offensively put into Malcolm's voice, besides the pretense that it's a story about four friends
- The additional fantasy of a ‘post-queer' landscape
- The transphobic introduction to Edie's party
- All subject-/interlocutor-vague narration from Harold (in fact letters to a painting of Willem's face) that diminishes Harold's character (‘You asked me once when I knew that he was for me, and I told you that I had always known. But that wasn't true, and I knew it even as I said it—I said it because it sounded pretty, like something someone might say in a book or a movie...')
- Dr. Traylor and his sex dungeon. How did Dr. Traylor even get caught? I had imagined Jude's legs being broken by Jude grabbing the wheel from Brother Luke to steer themselves into oncoming traffic to end his contrivedly torturous life
- The continuation of over the top villainous violence in Caleb
- About 50 pages reiterating self-harm
- The author's dismissal of psychiatry except maybe for the truly damaged in Willem's voice
- The jokes shared between Jude and Willem, which all fall unendearing not to mention unconvincing as connection
- A listing of every New York street the characters put their feet on
- How each of their friends die in the end
Even if it had been thoughtfully pruned and calibrated to a relatable scale, the novel's early glimmers of resonance could not survive the author's carrel of privilege and vision for suffering. The exploration of the aftermath of childhood trauma and the role of friendship in the potentiality of healing is weightily disrespected.
No stars for this one because it doesn't fall along the traditional “I hated it” or “I loved it” scale. This book has about a thousand trigger warnings and I thought it was a good book I wished I never read.
A devastating and heartbreaking story, brilliantly told, that I had to put down on occasions because it was so relentless and then couldn't stop reading at other times. The book simultaneously takes away your hope for humanity, while also providing you beautiful moments of friendship that make your heart swell. Absolutely don't read this when you are feeling low. It made me cry a lot of tears.