A Little Life Book Review

A Little Life   

By: Hanya Yanagihara 

Released: March 10th, 2015
Pages: 720
My Rating: 4.5/5

Goodreads Synopsis: 

Brace yourself for the most astonishing, challenging, upsetting, and profoundly moving book in many a season. An epic about love and friendship in the twenty-first century that goes into some of the darkest places fiction has ever traveled and yet somehow improbably breaks through into the light. Truly an amazement—and a great gift for its readers.

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is 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cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. 

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever. 

My Review:

Never in my life have I found myself sobbing because of a book, but that is exactly what happened when I decided to read A Little Life. What an amazing, heart wrenching, maddening novel. It's been about a week since I finished the book and I still have so many feelings lingering around it. I'm going to try to get them all down here, well at least the main ones because I could talk about this book all day if you let me (Side note: I will not be spoiling anything, so if that is something you are worried about, no worries!).

First things first, let's get the topic of "torture porn" out of the way. When I was looking into this book, this is one of the biggest discussions I came across. Many reviews say that the author took things too far and it feels aggressively sad. While I will be the first to say that this is one of the saddest books I have ever read, I would not categorize this as "torture porn". There are numerous tragedies that take place in this book and, yes, when I tried to explain all that happened to my husband it felt like it was an excessive amount of horrible things, but I think that is the point. It highlights that life can be really awful and horrible and that bad things happen to underserving people. It also showcases that those who suffer from abuse can never truly "leave it all behind". Their abuse may stop but the suffering will never cease - it will always be apart of them and because of that it also becomes apart of the people closest to them as well. Everyone has their own ways of dealing with trauma and there are different levels of how it affects each of us everyday. I think that entire concept was depicted hauntingly in this book. The authors purpose in writing this was to make you feel something (and boy does it) and I get the debate on this topic, but at the end of the day I view it more as a heart wrenching journey through the mind of a survivor than "torture porn".

Next, let's cover how amazingly well this book is written! While the topics in this book were (very) hard to stomach at times, there is no doubt that it was done beautifully. I could not put it down, no matter how badly I may have wanted to at times. I felt so connected to all four of the main characters, Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcom. You really spend a good amount of time just following each of them around and really getting to know them in their current lives and thoughts, their upbringings, and all of their struggles. I truly felt like I was the fifth wheel in the friend group and that we were sharing all these moments together. The tight knit friend group she creates in her writing is one that most people dream of having. You can tell that each person cares deeply for the next and even though they have their fair share of quarrels (who doesn't?) at the end of the day they still all care for one other. I have never felt so connected to characters in a book before and I believe the author did an absolute amazing job at creating not only their relationships with each other but making you, the reader, feel like you are living there with them too.

Now, let's talk about the one thing that irked me the most in my reading of this. I found it extremely frustrating how there were such a clear cut, textbook definitions of mental illness but no one seemed to want to help each other or themselves in the ways that could have altered their life paths. I found myself yelling at many of the characters throughout my read at some of the decisions they made to either ignore some serious signs or to just not decide that it as okay and normal. Now, I know, easier said than done, right? I realize you can only help someone who wants to help themselves and sometimes when things are this heavy and it's easier to try to forget and run away than have to talk about and confront them. I just wanted the best for all the characters because you grow to care so much about them all and it was truly angering when they did not want to help themselves and that was part of the overarching tragedy of the entire book.

This feels weird to say, but this will forever be one of my favorite books of all time. It has touched me in ways that no media has ever touched me before. I do believe that readers can benefit from reading this (via soul cleanse lol), however, before you pick this one up look up the trigger warnings and make sure you are in a good place mentally because this story can shatter you just as well. It is an amazing book, but is also extremely heavy and takes a big toll on you, so just make sure you are prepared to go into it before you begin. It will haunt you for days - I'm just beginning to digest all my thoughts on this book to write this post and I'm getting teary eyed all over again. A Little Life was a very cathartic read for me. Not only did it make me feel every emotion under the sun but it got me thinking deeper than I have in quite some time. I find myself discussing topics in this book in my head in any free time I have, it has left a mark on my being. Obviously, I need someone to talk about this with so please let me know all your thoughts on it in the comments! 

Catch you later, 

Molly