I just finished A Little Life and man… where’s the red pencil when you need it? *SPOILERS*

I finally got around to reading A Little Life in full after putting it down 10 years ago. Maybe it's a false memory, but I remember the book being pretty well received back then and I only recently learned how hated it actually is. When friends asked me what I was reading and they heard, they all said something like "Ugh, good luck." This entire post will have spoilers so if you haven't read it, just skip this whole thing.

I have thoughts. These will be scattered and loose because it's a Sunday so I'm just rambling but I'd still like to hear your thoughts.

Right off rip, I'll say that I didn't hate it – or rather – I tolerated most of what I didn't like but I definitely didn't hate it so much as got annoyed by it. I think so much of the hate it receives could've been avoided with just a few edits (most of which are commissions). As a queer man of color, am I bothered? Not really. Do I think it's torture porn? No, I just think it's overwrought and could've benefitted from a slashing of about 150-200 pages.

What I liked:

※ The characters, all unique but somehow familiar, were true to life and I found myself wanting to read them more. How Yanagihara slowly revealed details like last names, weight, racial makeup, etc. How thoroughly we get an internal look at each of the four and, even with shortages here and there, we know everything we need to know about them.

※ Despite how horrible Jude's life is, I hesitate to call it torture porn only because Yanagihara keeps really explicit horrors just out of view, specifically the sexual violence. You know it's happening but it's not so graphic and detailed either. I also didn't get the impression that Yanagihara enjoyed torturing Jude. I just think the pen really got away from her and she just didn't know when to stop.

※ I loved the writing style and how it just flowed (even in the more tedious parts). I like the weird vacuum in time that it's in where time is passing but we don't have any distracting mile marker. We don't know what year it is and generally, I don't think it matters all that much anyway.

※ While I've seen it deemed lazy (and I can see why), I enjoyed the abstract nature of the fame (except Jude more on that later) and notoriety that each of the main four achieve. I don't particularly find their fame and accomplishments all that out of the ordinary. We don't get a step by step rags to riches story, but we do get little tidbits of their striving and their hard work and lucky breaks coming in (except Jude but yeah.). I also read some complaints about Willem being in his early 50s and still getting leading man roles and I don't really see the problem there if he's this grand beauty and actor everyone makes him to be.

What I didn't like:

※ Let's get it out of the way. The near-biblical trials of Jude. I mean honestly, even Job didn't suffer this much. The way Yanagihara just kept popping in with "But wait there's MORE!" annoyed me so much. To the point where I kind of saw Jude leap off the page and look at me, side-eye'd and raising an eyebrow as if it say "Bro, really?". In between reads I kept wondering if the editor ever tried to walk anything back to Yanagihara. Because I would've set it up like whack-a-mole. It would go something like this:

"Okay so I read your draft and we're going to need to make a choice here. You have the Monastery where all the children and adults routinely abuse Jude, the man who grooms him and kidnaps him, the three year exploitation cycle in a seedy motel, the halfway home where he is routinely abused, the hitchhiking sequence where he's abused by every truck driver from one side of the country to the other, the strange sociopathic therapist who finds him, abuses him, keeps him in a basement, and then cripples him. Then later in life, you give him a cartoonish boyfriend who beats him halfway to death and karate kicks him down a stairwell. Oh and \checks notes* he has STIs and some kind of wounds on his legs that open up here and* there okay well… anyway. So here's what we're going to do – you're going to keep two of those and throw away the rest. I'll even let you cripple Jude in one of the two scenarios if you feel that's so important to the character, but it has to be from one of the two scenarios you get to keep."

That fix alone would more or less remove every glaring issue I have with the book. We didn't need all that.

※ Jude's Excessive Talents – So again, this is a scenario that could've been solved with some cuts. Apparently Jude, despite his trauma and time constraints and unconventional education, speaks four languages fluently, sings like an angel, cooks like a world class chef, is a master of crushingly difficult mathematics, and is a vicious lawyer in court? No girl. You get three of those at most before it becomes completely unbelievable. And you know what? I'd genuinely take any of the three, I don't care. With just three of those, I could suspend my disbelief just fine.

※ Andy – in what universe does a doctor have enough free time to dedicate to one patient? In the US? In New York City? No that's not a thing.

※ Sheer repetition. I pity Jude so much that when he says "sorry" I still feel bad for him and the way he's been attacked and abused and can't find it in himself to get help. Fine. But by the time I was in the last 200 pages or so, I was ready for them to just wrap it up already. This is made more annoying by how the book actually ends which is pretty predictable, but that's a long way to get there.

TL:DR – I still enjoyed the book. I didn't hate it. Honestly, I lamented it because it's SO CLOSE to being a great novel. I want to spend more time with these characters in a universe that isn't so overwrought. It could've been something great if she got an editor. Hell, maybe an abridged re-release. Something. I don't know.

What did you think of this book?