I tried to prepare myself, really, I did. Reviews were read. Excerpts were found. Quotes were collected. Everything I could have done to prepare for this book, I did, and still this pile of paper destroyed me in ways that can never be repaired.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a chonky, trauma-filled book with characters that will pull your heartstrings and events that will make you sick to your stomach. When people recommend that you enter this one with a good mental state, they mean it.
The premise is fairly simple: four friends living in New York try to shape their lives. “Kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.”
Jude is the glue that keeps this bunch together, but his life is consistently woven by trauma. It becomes obvious that he is a broken man, haunted by scars—both mental and physical—as he struggles through his definition of self worth.
…But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.
There’s a reason this book is so polarizing in discussions and reviews: It’s not a fun read. Yanagihara really nails in the fact that the world is a dark and cruel place in a relentless way that will leave you gasping for breath. Reading this book is a lot like trying to grasp loose sand and watching as it slips through your fingertips. Happiness isn’t a frequent theme here, even when you beg for it.
This is even more interesting when you take in the cover of this novel. At a first glance, it seems to depict a man in absolute agony. However, look up the image captured by photographer Peter Hujar, and you’ll find its title: “Orgasmic Man.”
It’s yet another layer to this heavy-handed story, one with a tinge of ambiguity that highlights that thin, microscopic line between pleasure and pain. Yanagihara has addressed the image, revealing that she insisted on using the photograph for the cover, describing it as “visceral” and filled with “intimacy and emotion.”
A Little Life sure does like to teeter on the tightrope separating agony and ecstacy.
Mixed in the relentless bad are the friendships that are so exquisitely written. Perhaps such heavy, unbeatable pain makes the good glimpses feel much more euphoric than they actually are, but you’ll find yourself clawing for the relief those tiny doses bring. It’s grotesque and beautiful and even though I had to put the book down at times just to breathe, I couldn’t stop.
You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.
Jude’s relationships with his friends, often tender and bittersweet, evolve throughout the years, both in good ways and bad, highlighting the complexities of the human experience through a mixture of sharp tragedy and soft love.
A Little Life is a ruthless gut punch that will leave you in tatters, but if you want to explore the darker side of trauma and the scars it leaves behind, this is a book you should carefully wade through.
Living is hard. Sometimes, it’s impossible.
And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.
[…] reading some heavier books like A Little Life and The Poppy War, I was ready to ease back into some lighter stories. I fell into The Last Hour […]