Fuck this book.
And it started out so well! The writing is actually gorgeous. I can see why many, many people like this book. Really, Hanya Yanagihara knows how to use language. Unfortunately, the story she told was not worthy of it. The longer I read this book, the more I dreaded reading it, the worse my feelings got as I read, and the more I hated it for existing. Then I read a bunch of interviews by her and hated the book even more.
The long and short of it is that this book is nothing but misery porn, on purpose. (Here’s a Vulture interview where she talks about the inspiration for writing the book to create a book version of ombré cloth, which if you’re not familiar, by the time you get to the end is pitch black. Yeah, let’s make art that will stain our souls!!!!!)
Nothing in life is positive, there is only human suffering, true connection is impossible, predators will always find and ruin truly good people, everything is evil, the people who love you are not enough to save you, and your happiness will turn to ashes in your mouth. The End.
Fuck. This. Book.
There is a lot more that I could say about this book but I don’t think I have enough time or space. Other people have criticized more articulately the implications of the way Yanagihara treats her gay characters, who exist seemingly only to suffer (while paradoxically others have praised it as the great gay novel). She also stated in several other interviews her desire to write a character so broken he couldn’t be fixed, which she accomplishes in her protagonist Jude. Some have called this a melodrama, and that seems accurate. Everything is over the top, but stated in such bald and beautiful prose that it doesn’t feel that way at the time. Instead, these larger than life events are made to seem trite and commonplace. Yes, there are bad priests in the Catholic church. Yes, the church covered this up. Do I think it’s likely that an entire abbey full of Franciscans (the most peaceable and loving sect in Catholicism) would not only participate in child molestation, but condone it almost openly? Hell no.
The real deal breaker for me was when I paused midway through the novel to read an interview where Yanagihara stated her criticism of psychiatry as a way to treat mental illness. The implication that some people are too broken to help and we should just let them die is so, so harmful, and in no way does it help to eradicate the stigma against mental illness in this country. We should not be telling “broken” people it’s okay to die. We should be telling them they are not alone in their suffering, and help them find ways to cope with their illnesses and traumas. I will admit I checked out of the book then, and it was only a matter of time before I gave up and spoiled myself on the rest of it, so I wouldn’t have to torture myself mentally any further.
Glad I did, because the end of this book is a big rusty nail up the butt.
This one from the London Review of Books is my favorite review of the book I’ve read so far. Let me quote my favorite part:
“He wishes he too could forget, that he too could choose never to consider Caleb again. Always, he wonders why and how he has let four months – four months increasingly distant from him – so affect him, so alter his life. But then, he might as well ask – as he often does – why he has let the first 15 years of his life so dictate the past 28.”
The answer, of course, is that it’s Yanagihara’s design. That’s why it’s good to know that Jude is entirely her concoction, not a figure based on testimony by survivors of child rape, clinical case studies or anything empirical. I found Jude an infuriating object of attention, but resisted blaming the victim. I blame the author.
A Little Life has received some ecstatic reviews. The most intriguing of these is the novelist Garth Greenwell’s in the Atlantic, which argues that it’s the long-awaited ‘great gay novel’: ‘It engages with aesthetic modes long coded as queer: melodrama, sentimental fiction, grand opera,’ he writes. ‘By violating the canons of current literary taste, by embracing melodrama and exaggeration and sentiment, it can access emotional truths denied more modest means of expression.’ Perhaps I’m in thrall to current literary taste, but the only character in A Little Life who seems possessed of anything like ‘emotional truths’ or a sense of irony, the only supporting player in this elaborately ethnically diverse cast who doesn’t seem like a stereotypical middle-class striver plucked out of 1950s cinema, is JB. He’s temporarily ushered out of the narrative after he says to Jude: ‘You like always being the person who gets to learn everyone else’s secrets, without ever telling us a single fucking thing? … Well, it doesn’t fucking work like that, and we’re all fucking sick of you.’ JB’s also the one hooked on crystal meth. What real person trapped in this novel wouldn’t become a drug addict?
I think what makes the most angry about this book is that I do see flashes of brilliance in it. Images I loved, earned emotions. Early on in the novel, one character muses about being a guest in his own life. Another talks about photography in terms that made me stop in my tracks and pause the audiobook just so I think about what she’d written. Later, the relationship between Jude and his adoptive father and the love his adoptive father has for him made me cry. But all of that doesn’t matter, when the end result is what we’re given.
What it comes down to the fact that pain was the only point, and I think that is reprehensible.
That’s what I was worried about. I will be skipping this one. Great review!
Oh no! I always feel so bad when reviews of mine make people not read books. Which makes no sense because I one-starred it and went on a rant, so you’d think I’d be all for it!
I cannot do books that are endlessly relentless and miserable. I’m reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn right now (which is great, but soo depressing) and actually had to look up the ending, because I wasn’t sure I could keep going if there wasn’t going to be some sort of improvement in these characters’ lives. Now that I know things work out, I will happily keep reading.
Malin, don’t read this book. You will hate it. Possibly even more than you hated Catcher in the Rye.
–A Public Service Announcement from Me
I appreciate your PSA. I have just this second finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I am crying, but happy tears and it was absolutely amazing and all the suffering was to a purpose because poor people actually WERE that miserable in Brooklyn in the 1910s and it all comes out good in the end because of the indomidable human spirit and such. I have taken A Little Life OFF my TBR list.
Part of me wants you to go read the Wikipedia summary so you can see what I’m saving you from, but I don’t think I want to wish even that much on you.
You know I’m going to have to do it now. I’ve heard so much about this book. I think I can probably survive a Wiki summary. I’ll browse it in between my epic comics read this week.
And then maybe you should come back here and tell me your exact reaction. For science.
While markedly different in innumerable ways, I just finished Cujo and had very similar thoughts.
The book was well written, and had numerous passages that felt honest and poignant, I kind of think it ultimately existed to produce heartache.
I don’t think I could stomach this, which seems so much worse.
I haven’t read Cujo so I can’t comment on that specific book, but I will say that’s odd, because usually Uncle Stevie is good at not having suffering without a point. In any case, this book is not horror, so the fact that it’s horrifying anyway I don’t think is to its credit.
“The implication that some people are too broken to help and we should just let them die is so, so harmful, and in no way does it help to eradicate the stigma against mental illness in this country.”
I had decided against reading this book quite awhile ago, but with your link to the author’s interview and your thoughts on her position about mental health care and therapy I know now I will never read anything by this author. Fuck that.
(and narfna don’t feel bad for turning me off her, there are plenty of books you’ve brought into my life to balance the score.)
I was honestly gobsmacked by that interview, which gave me whiplash. I went from agreeing with her strongly about the way we socialize men to deal (or not deal) with their feelings, to being so mad I had to stop reading when I got to her “therapy is a belief system” nonsense. She makes it seem like a cultural difference, but I have a really really hard time buying into that.
Great Review – Fuck. this. book. sums it up. Agree totally with the reviewer she quotes who says he refused to get mad at Jude and got mad at her. She is so melodramatic and inaccurate about human behavior it makes me think she is just a spoiled brat trying to write for attention instead of creative expression. She is so wrong about Jude it’s scary – I know its her character and all, but humans are not wired like that – I didn’t buy so much of what she was selling I totally tapped out after finally finding out about Dr. Trailer. I too HAD to finish it but save yourselves. What did they keep saying in the book “What a Waste” – and what is with these people handing out awards? Do they know anything about the human spirit at all? UGH sounds like they need to stop reading so much and get out and experience what real life actually is then go back to judging books about life experiences. I have never ever felt strongly enough about a book to actually rant on a random Blog page but WOW. I haven’t read her interview but I can imagine I am going to be pissed because the whole time I was reading the book I thought what a horrible disservice she is doing the millions of people out there who have benefited from or could benefit from good psychiatric care. She should be reprimanded for that.
Thank you , I gave it up, dreadful book. Picked up an iris Murdoch book already fully engrossed. 800 pages of dreary reading .
All I have to say is: ” a big rusty nail up the butt” ? Well *there’s* an image for you!
I hope that it conveys my loathing of this book adequately.