A Little Life.

By Hanya Yanagihara

Okay. This book.

So when I was a few hundred pages in I began to wonder why I had started to read this book in the first place. I put the ebook on hold because I read a small blurb on the library website. It intrigued me, as did the title, so I figured, "what the heck, I'll give it a go." Had I known what I was getting myself into I am not so sure I would have started. 

I went back and read the blurb again. It is obvious to me now that I read the first few sentences, decided I was interested, and skimmed the rest. This is what I read: 

"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cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.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."

This is what I skimmed: 

"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.  In rich and resplendent prose, Yanagihara has fashioned a tragic and transcendent hymn to brotherly love, a masterful depiction of heartbreak, and a dark examination of the tyranny of memory and the limits of human endurance."

This book is heavy. And I mean heavy. But somehow I couldn't bring myself to not finish it. It is also quite a long book. I spent close to a month slogging through it. I think it would have taken me even longer if it hadn't been a library book that was close to expiring and had already been renewed once. I started reading through my breaks at work. It only made me cry at work twice. 

There is some ugly stuff in this book; things that are hard to read and even harder to imagine happening to a person. It is not pretty. The start of the book sort of focuses on all four characters equally and then it sort of narrows in on Jude as it goes on. At first, Jude is just a quiet and enigmatic character. His past is hinted at but never explained. It was almost annoying and you just wished they would tell you what happened to him. Then they do tell you and you suddenly wish they would go back to being vague about it. 

However, there were also some absolutely beautiful parts of this book. I think that maybe on a backdrop of such ugliness, the small happy things seemed more beautiful. I think Willem is one of my favourite characters I've ever encountered in a book. I don't want to make light of the ugliness though. You know, do that thing where we glorify pain and suffering and call it elegant or beautiful because it's not actually happening to us. But there were some parts of this book that were happy, or at least a kind of happy, or maybe just a kind of less sad. The happy times were always accompanied by a nagging sort of foreboding feeling, like you knew it couldn't stay this good forever but you so badly wanted it to. 

I don't regret reading this book. I'm sort of glad I read it. I am also not sure if I would recommend it. 

Now that I am finished I have a sort of peace about the story. I can look back and choose to focus on some parts and try to let some of the ugliness go. But I don't know what your ugliness tolerance is, so read at your own risk. You might find this book triggering or particularly hard to read if you have had struggles with self-injury or have experienced sexual and/or emotional abuse (I mean, I'm pretty sure those things are hard for everyone to read about, but I imagine reading about the experiences and wading through the characters thoughts and the aftermath would be especially hard if it hit you in a more personal way).

I'm looking forward to reading some slightly less intense books next.