A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

New York, New York

This book has content warnings for sexual abuse (including child sexual exploitation), domestic abuse, physical abuse, drug use/addiction, self harm, and suicide.

This book is literally everything I look for in a book: loose timelines with a focus on introspective characters, deep thought, and beautiful prose. It was like On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous for modern New York City men that become very successful. But holy fucking shit, this book was difficult to get through.

The book follows the lives of four college roommates throughout their lives: Jude (the main character), Willem, JB and Malcolm. Jude becomes a successful corporate lawyer, JB a successful artist, Willem a world-famous actor, and Malcolm a successful architect. It’s clear from the beginning that Jude is mysterious and holds a troublesome past. I won’t get into spoilers, but it is rough (hence the plethora of content warning).

The book has its wonderful moments. My personal favorites are actually from the breaks in the focus on Jude. Harold, Jude’s adoptive father (mild spoiler), lost a son to a rare childhood disease. He has a section of narration in which he describes the loss of his child. He said one of the things nobody tells you about is when you become a parent, you are convinced every day of your life that you will lose this thing that you cherish most. You prepare yourself for it over and over every day once you see yourself as their parent. So when your child actually dies, there’s a relief to it. You know that the absolute worst thing that will ever happen to you has already happened, and now you don’t have to feel that panic anymore. JB’s section where he is narrating a weekend in New York by himself while all of his friends are away was incredible. He tells himself for the three day weekend he is not going to do drugs because he’s not an addict. But as time goes on, he struggles and struggles with what to do. His thoughts race and he thinks about how unhappy he is, how unloved he’s been. He’s angry and sad. As you can probably guess, he does end up doing drugs that weekend.

To me, those sections of prose are exactly the point of reading. I love being inside the heads of characters and books where they look back on where those views come from. You don’t get that from TV or movies (or even real life, typically).

However, hearing the tortured, continued thoughts of Jude gets really difficult to read. By the end, you’re essentially begging for the book to end. Yanagihara admits openly in various interviews that she wrote this book for the sole purpose of being sad. So folks that crticise this book for being torture porn are in fact, correct. It’s also really frustrating how everybody in Jude’s life (especially his doctor) enables him so profusely. From page one, it’s clear that Jude needs intense, professional help. Everyone thinks because he’s “smart” that he knows how to take care of himself. He absolutely does not. Everything that happens to Jude in his adult life could have been prevented or his pain could have been reduced if he had just gotten the help he needed. His people let him down. Come to find out, Yanagihara made some very ableist comments in an Atlantic interview that essentially stated some people are beyond help, and therapy and psychiatry wouldn’t work for them. So, if you follow the model of her characters, we should just let them suffer?

Anyways, politics aside, this was an amazing novel that I am so glad I read. I wish all books were written in this format. It’s going to take a long time before I find a book that I enjoy as much as this one.

Review by the Numbers

Overall: 4/5

Writing: 5/5

Message: 3/5

Plot: 4/5

Character Development: 4/5

Challenges Satisfied:

- New York (Reading My Way Around the World Challenge)

- A Book with a Protagonist who Uses a Mobility Aid (2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge)

- A Book with an Alliterative Title (2022 Fully Booked Reading Challenge)

- A Book that Makes You Cry (2022 Gotta Read ‘Em All Challenge)