A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

[goodreads]

Title: A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 796
Date read: September, 2022

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cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.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


1.5 star, rounded up on goodreads because of the quality of the writing. I pretty much only finished it because I got stubborn, and skimmed much of the last 200 pages.

My issues with the book:

1) Long book is LONG! And there's absolutely no need for it to be as long as it is. It's not boring as such, but definitely not a page turner either, and could definitely have used a more critical editor to whittle it down a bit.

2) The book is needlessly depressing. Yes, I know that horrible things happen to people, but this just seemed excessive. I now know that the author's intention was to write about a person who was broken beyond repair and it's just... a horrible thing to read about. Also, what's her point? That some people are beyond saving, and shouldn't even try? How's that for an uplifting commentary on life?

3) Jude should have been forced into therapy YEARS ago. I do understand that he didn't seek it out himself, but his friends, Harold, Andy... SOMEBODY should have forced him.

Honestly, in the end I couldn't even feel sorry for Jude any longer. It just seemed too unrealistic, too manipulative, too... too much! Other people told me they sobbed through the last few chapters - I was skimming at this point, because I just didn't care. I'd put in enough effort that I wanted to finish the book and learn what happened. But apart from that? Nope, didn't care.

So why still two stars instead of just one? Well, partly because I can't give half-stars here, and partly because any author who can keep me reading through almost 800 pages of writing (even if it did take me several months) obviously has something going for her. But this is definitely one of those books where I do NOT get the hype.