A Little Life

This is a melodramatic portrayal of an emotionally damaged trial lawyer and his long-suffering array of fans. He's so beautiful, so talented, so rich, and so very very very very very very very very sad and insecure (but that doesn't interfere with his ability to be the best trial attorney out there!). His personal tragedies are more numerous than Job's. The book cover portrays a man weeping - I don't think he's weeping enough. The cover should be a picture of some martyred saint - Saint Sebastian with all the arrows would be perfect. The end plate could be a woodcut scene of a mob of Victorian men grieving and tearing their clothes.
I hung in there until the end - because after awhile the idea of finishing this thing was akin to summiting Everest. I did the same thing with the ridiculously bloated “And Ladies of the Club”. I can proudly say I finished both of these books - but sweet Jebus, I'm never getting the time it took to read them back.

Captivating, beautiful, and heartbreaking.

Soul crushingly difficult to read and yet absolutely gripping

I have so many mixed feelings about this book. It is a heavy read. Not only because it's over 700 pages, but also the topics discussed. I found myself intrigued in the beginning, absolutely hating it in the middle, and sobbing at the end.

+ The feeling of really having been on a journey, having witnessed the life of Jude.
+ The topic of male friendships, the emotional side of it.
+ The normalcy of LGBT characters.
+ The way mourning was handled.
+ The way it slowly is revealed what happened in Jude's past
+ I like the writing style

- While gay characters where just a fact, not a novelty. There was a kind of doomed to be sad or die if you are gay. This trope makes me roll my eyes.
- Jude saying I'm sorry thousands of times
- Caleb. Really. Wtf was that. I hated this part because this did feel like I was being emotionally manipulated.
- The improbability of how much abuse happens to Jude. I mean it was really shit upon shit upon shit.
- The improbability of everyone being rich, well off, jetting of to all corners of the earth like it's nothing
- Everyone enabling Jude.
- The death of Willem was kind of cliche.
- The switching of POV without warning was confusing.

this book was gorgeous and horrific and astonishing and heart wrenching all at the same time. i think i might be a little bit in love with half of the characters in here.

my heart has caught on fire and the ashes are blowing everywhere. i feel like i have both found and lost part of my soul.

(on to some lighter reading – though tbh it's not going to be difficult finding something less heavy than this)

Don't know where to start ... Illuminating on so many levels!!! One of those books you wish would never end, however it's value lies in the fact that you know it must end. Expertly woven story and believable characters.

Perhaps one of the most powerful and difficult books I have ever read. I have to put it on my “top shelf” of all time reads but this book is not for everyone.

This is a detailed story about the love and friendship that four men share from college into late middle age and it centers around one of the four, Jude, who is a severely broken person stemming from an unimaginable childhood. However he finds grace in a transformative relationship with someone who loves him so deeply you will often be on the verge of tears.

Don't go lightly into “A Little Life,” but go you might.

I'm of a generation that is the product of unedited violence, true crime television, overdramatized news broadcasts teaching me about the horrors outside my own home + inside my own head.

For all the engrained desensitization, I still found myself having to close this book, walk outside, hug a stranger - grab onto something light, something good.

Exquisite writing.

This book will break your heart.
You must prepare to be collapsed by the realities of injustice.

But you just must power through to experience the unconditional love on profound display.

Book Club 2016

I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars, but there's way more to that rating. I both loved and loathed this book; I think it's perfect as it is but also think it could easily be 200 pages shorter and that some of its more disturbing elements (it's BRUTAL) reach a point of diminishing returns and strain credulity, but at the same time I wonder if it would still be as impactful without those things. There's a lot to think about in the depictions of race (or strange lack thereof?) and in the blithe privilege of literally every character. Like I said, it's not perfect, but also it kind of is?

I have no idea how to rate this book. I glared at it most of the time; couldn't toss it; and was grateful for the ending. I have nothing articulate to say beyond that, except much of my reading was spent thinking how Catholic and 21st century this book was. But just now I wonder if we can throw in Hardy and Jude the obscure too (another inordinately difficult book)?

Simply stunning, very emotional and at times draining. Sharp and witty, eloquent and Elogant.

This book and its ideas of love, friendship and reconciling the past is a staggering achievement. You will laugh, definitely cry and without doubt you'll care. I think that's where this book shines the most, you are invested, you care what decisions the characters make. You will at times even find yourself deep in thought pondering the emotional state and the choices of the characters. I feel like I have lived with these characters, they aren't just words on a pages, these people are in my heart and are known to me like the closest of friends.

I know this book will be with me, close to my heart for many years to come.

Jesus. This gets five stars, for sure, with the caveat that it's not without fault; there comes a point where the series of traumas and degradations that befall Jude lose their potency as tools for character development and simply become wearying. But this book is beautiful, and full of characters that will rip your heart out.

Heartwrenching, but I couldn't stop reading.

Probably the most depressing book I've ever read. Even more depressing than The Road by Cormac McCarthy, somehow.

3.5 stars. I wanted to like this book so much, but was ultimately disappointed. It was great at first as I found myself drawn to the story and interested in all of the characters, their lives and interactions. About mid-point, however, the story started to drag. I found myself getting tired of the same emotional drama and just wanted the book to end.

There was beautiful writing and potential here, but overall I felt like the novel was overwritten and tedious. I would only recommend this book to literary fiction lovers who know what they are getting themselves into.

Absolutely the most depressing book I've ever read. I wanted to put it down because it was absolutely heart wrenching but I was so hooked on the characters that I couldn't stop.

I didn't take to this book as fast as I did to Yanagihara's debut; it was more of a slow burner.

There were several moments where I almost quit reading: about halfway when I realised just how sad it was going to be, then again at about three quarters in when my perspective shifted from a reader following a plot to someone perched on the writer's shoulder as she tortures a voodoo doll of a character. If this was a manuscript I would've sent it back right then bookmarked at around page 400 saying “this is where I become disengaged”.

I thought she'd completely lost me when I started finding all those calamities grotesque and when my analysis fixed itself on “UGH Yanagihara give this man a break!!!” At that point the only thing that could redeem this book for me was an elegant ending.

And boy did she deliver. It was so smooth I almost missed it. I finished the book late at night, desperate to be done with it and with all the sadness and when it was done I went to sleep a bit sad but also unburdened. But then a few hours later I woke up like OHHHHHHHHHHHH and I got it, and I gave Yanagihara a mental slow clap for it. Then I cried for a couple of hours because it was just so damn sad.

I'm so emotionally drained I'll be reading nothing but non-fiction for several months now.

I love books that rip open my chest, show me my beating heart, and force me to see the world through the eyes of a different person. When I read, I want to feel. I want to be touched. And the most successful books are that ones that do that—that leave me in amazement whether it is because of beauty, fear, rage, wonder, whatever. A Little Life promised to be “the most astonishing, challenging, upsetting, and profoundly moving book in many a season.” I expected raw emotion to wet every page of this novel. And while A Little Life was certainly well-written and intriguing, the one thing it didn't succeed at was moving me.

That's not to say I didn't have moments when I felt a little teary-eyed. I did. But for a 720-page epic supposed tear-jerker, these moments were too few. The truth is, I felt considerable disconnect. Sure, the story of Jude is sad. Very, very sad. At the same time, Jude seems to exist in a completely different universe than the one I live in. For starters, time is not the same. In A Little Life, time progresses, but the world doesn't change. Despite spanning some fifty years, the novel has a very contemporary feel to it. Now, I understand this was probably the author's intention, a means to not let the story get bogged down by trivial matters (my wife disagrees and says it's just lazy writing), but it's still distracting. At the beginning of the novel, we have laptops and cellphones and corporate lawyers and gay marriage and discrimination based on sexual orientation. And fifty years later we have the exact same?

Which brings us to the second point of disconnect. Although uncommon in the novel, there are moments when characters face discrimination because they are gay. There is one moment when a character faces potential backlash from the masses for his embrace of a gay relationship. Yet, in this world, nearly everyone is gay or bisexual. Sure, there were a few characters in heterosexual relationships, but it is implied that every person has had sex with someone of the same gender at some point in life. Willem, for one, doesn't know a man who hasn't; and Willem knows a lot of people. So what world is this? How can I believe gay relationships are so incredibly widespread, yet disdained? How can it be both? This takes me one step further from an emotional response. See, what's happening here is that my mind is switching to its logical side, and the emotional is being neglected. But I'm not done.

Where is the world in which there are so many people would friend Jude? He's deeply troubled. He's a considerable amount of work. As someone who has been around a large number of people with mental illnesses that do not even compare with Jude St. Francis', I can say I have never once seen such an outpouring of love. That's not to say someone couldn't love Jude. Of course Jude could realistically have one or two people in his life who risk everything for his well-being. But to have so many people in the first place, and so many, on top of that, who do not give up. Well, my logical side says that's not reality.

And then there's the wealth aspect. Is everyone in this world rich? Yeah, I'm having a little trouble feeling for you when you're flying around the world and building your dream home. I have problems, too.

So far, I have been a big whiner. It's not that I didn't enjoy this book. I did. I enjoyed the characters and the story. I enjoyed the writing and the mystery. Yanagihara nailed Jude's inner torment with skill and grace. But if a book is going to be sold as “profoundly moving,” I expect to be moved. And yet, the only character that succeeded in moving me was Harold. And I think that's because Harold was the most human character. He'd experienced loss and he was willing to sacrifice everything to get back what he'd lost. He was a father with a fairly normal occupation and he believed in things and had hopes, but also had doubts. I accepted Harold because his actions and reactions were relatable. Jude's story was devastating to say the least. Perhaps there are people out there like Jude who make something of themselves, but they are so few that I have to doubt their existence. I've known kids in similar situations as Jude. Those who don't kill themselves live the life of a transient. They cannot commit to anything. They work Burger King one week, McDonald's the next; all their money goes to drugs, video games, tattoos—stuff that either makes them numb or causes them to feel pain. Jude's story was devastating, but its outcomes were not. I didn't feel sorry for Jude because despite all his pain, he'd lived a fuller life than most of us are given.

Yes, I liked this novel. Overall, it was very successful. Had I been able to turn off my logical side, had I not been thinking of my many injustices, I'm sure I would've fallen to the floor weeping. There are many out there who face the kind of trials Jude does and they should not be forgotten. But the story about sexually and physically abused kids that I want to hear—the kind that succeeds in moving me—is not the story of a powerful corporate attorney who is married to a hot movie star. That's the stuff of fairy tales, which brings us back around to the question of time. Is A Little Life a Fantasy book? The most depressing fantasy ever written, to be sure, but nevertheless a fantasy?

Once upon a time there was a boy named Jude...

An architect, painter actor and lawyer move to New York to carve out incredibly successful lives. As the years pass the nature if their friendship evolves and changes from the early struggles post graduation as 20 somethings in New York as waiters, killing hours behind a desk or barely scraping by in a borrowed loft. And here, Yanagihara, an Asian American woman, nails the familiar New York story of countless upper class, white, hipster male writers.

The men go on to enjoy lofty critical success in their lives, each at the top of their game. But then she veers from this familiar trajectory and focuses on the enigmatic Jude. We are slowly opened to his wrenching past and how it informs his present. The hyenas of his painful history always circling and closing in. This is a brick of a book and filled with triggering, hard to read episodes.

It's about the hidden pain each of us nurture and the insufficiencies of language, of kindness, or faith to bridge that gap and the beauty to be found in those that try. This thing is a gut punch.