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A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara
It has taken me what now feels like an eternity to put into words how much I love this novel. This is in large part because Hanya Yanagihara’s [b:A Little Life|22822858|A Little Life|Hanya Yanagihara|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1446469353l/22822858._SY75_.jpg|42375710] pierced through my hardened android heart in ways that few other works have ever truly affected.
This story begins with four young friends from college making a go at living in New York City. Jude is a lawyer with an enigmatic past, Willem is an actor with a gentle heart, JB is a painter who exudes extroverted energy in excess, and Malcom is an architect eternally struggling with his identity. Much of the story focuses on Jude and Willem; neither have families to return “home” to, and with this lack of social and economic security, they come to lean on one another and form a truly magical relationship.
“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?” (573)
As the novel meanders all the way through their lives to middle age, we see how they impact one another, for better or worse, as the decades roll by. No one’s life is without some form of trauma, and this novel has no shortage of that (it can be downright brutal at a times, fair warning). The source of the novel’s drama though, lies in how they are each able to come to terms with their respective struggles, how they are able to open up about these truths, as well as how in many ways they must remained closed off. So for as challenging as it was to read some of these passages, it always felt worth it in the end, even if different plots’ endings were not in the least bit tidy.
Seeing these characters grow over decades, it was hard not to grow attached to them, and this is a real testament to Hanya Yanagihara’s talent as a literary author. I still find myself thinking about them months after finishing the book. In particular, I feel like Jude will never truly leave me. While he suffers horrors beyond even my own imaginings, I cannot remember relating to a character more. We both live with PTSD sustained from childhood trauma, and we both live with chronic pain and physical disability that is difficult to characterize. Sometimes, having to explain pain is more painful than the pain itself.
Living in a body that you have less control over each year, is also a trauma in and of itself, as we see with Jude:
“He felt in those minutes his body’s treason, how sometimes the central, tedious struggle in his life was his unwillingness to accept that he would be betrayed by it again and again, that he could expect nothing from it and yet had to keep maintaining it. So much time, his and Andy’s, was spent trying to repair something unfixable, something that should have wound up in charred bits on a slag heap years ago. And for what? His mind, he supposed. But there was—as Andy might have said—something incredibly arrogant about that, as if he was saving a jalopy because he had a sentimental attachment to its sound system.” (141)
Trauma, both physical and psychological, is inherently messy. It can leave you feeling isolated for a number of reasons, but I think the most pressing one is that it is so excruciatingly difficult to communicate a reality to others who will never truly comprehend it unless they themselves have lived it. Even though we all want to be understood, as is human nature, no empathetic person could possibly wish this type of layered trauma on another mortal soul. More so, there are fears (both imagined and real) that if you let healthy people in, your pain will only inevitably infect and harm them. Who wants to spread misery? Jude is haunted by this daunting reality, and for all that life does to harm him, no one ever truly hurts him as much as his own self-loathing.
“For years, he couldn’t understand why this was so important to him, why it mattered to him so much, why he was always trying to argue against his own memories, to spend so much time debating the details of what had happened. And then he realized that it was because he thought that if he could convince himself that it was less awful than he remembered, then he could also convince himself that he was less damaged, that he was closer to healthy, than he feared he was.” (539)
I can personally attest that when decades of PTSD and physical trauma intersect, there is a very real and specific impact to the human spirit—fractures that never truly go away. Stained glass windows are often what I think of when reaching for an example of how to successfully build a life around such cracks. These fissures will always be there, but with the right support your life can still be filled with beauty and resonance. That said, these types of struggles are evergreen, so for all my optimism it would be disingenuous to preach that this is easy or even achievable for everyone.
Overall, if you want catharsis then this novel might not be for you, but if you want something raw and real then you’d be doing yourself a disservice to not pick up a copy. I only became aware of this book when I started working through the BBC Radio 4’s "The ten books we rarely get around to reading" challenge. While this was something I chose on a whim, this may be one of the greatest works I’ve ever read. Period.
This story begins with four young friends from college making a go at living in New York City. Jude is a lawyer with an enigmatic past, Willem is an actor with a gentle heart, JB is a painter who exudes extroverted energy in excess, and Malcom is an architect eternally struggling with his identity. Much of the story focuses on Jude and Willem; neither have families to return “home” to, and with this lack of social and economic security, they come to lean on one another and form a truly magical relationship.
“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?” (573)
As the novel meanders all the way through their lives to middle age, we see how they impact one another, for better or worse, as the decades roll by. No one’s life is without some form of trauma, and this novel has no shortage of that (it can be downright brutal at a times, fair warning). The source of the novel’s drama though, lies in how they are each able to come to terms with their respective struggles, how they are able to open up about these truths, as well as how in many ways they must remained closed off. So for as challenging as it was to read some of these passages, it always felt worth it in the end, even if different plots’ endings were not in the least bit tidy.
Seeing these characters grow over decades, it was hard not to grow attached to them, and this is a real testament to Hanya Yanagihara’s talent as a literary author. I still find myself thinking about them months after finishing the book. In particular, I feel like Jude will never truly leave me. While he suffers horrors beyond even my own imaginings, I cannot remember relating to a character more. We both live with PTSD sustained from childhood trauma, and we both live with chronic pain and physical disability that is difficult to characterize. Sometimes, having to explain pain is more painful than the pain itself.
Living in a body that you have less control over each year, is also a trauma in and of itself, as we see with Jude:
“He felt in those minutes his body’s treason, how sometimes the central, tedious struggle in his life was his unwillingness to accept that he would be betrayed by it again and again, that he could expect nothing from it and yet had to keep maintaining it. So much time, his and Andy’s, was spent trying to repair something unfixable, something that should have wound up in charred bits on a slag heap years ago. And for what? His mind, he supposed. But there was—as Andy might have said—something incredibly arrogant about that, as if he was saving a jalopy because he had a sentimental attachment to its sound system.” (141)
Trauma, both physical and psychological, is inherently messy. It can leave you feeling isolated for a number of reasons, but I think the most pressing one is that it is so excruciatingly difficult to communicate a reality to others who will never truly comprehend it unless they themselves have lived it. Even though we all want to be understood, as is human nature, no empathetic person could possibly wish this type of layered trauma on another mortal soul. More so, there are fears (both imagined and real) that if you let healthy people in, your pain will only inevitably infect and harm them. Who wants to spread misery? Jude is haunted by this daunting reality, and for all that life does to harm him, no one ever truly hurts him as much as his own self-loathing.
“For years, he couldn’t understand why this was so important to him, why it mattered to him so much, why he was always trying to argue against his own memories, to spend so much time debating the details of what had happened. And then he realized that it was because he thought that if he could convince himself that it was less awful than he remembered, then he could also convince himself that he was less damaged, that he was closer to healthy, than he feared he was.” (539)
I can personally attest that when decades of PTSD and physical trauma intersect, there is a very real and specific impact to the human spirit—fractures that never truly go away. Stained glass windows are often what I think of when reaching for an example of how to successfully build a life around such cracks. These fissures will always be there, but with the right support your life can still be filled with beauty and resonance. That said, these types of struggles are evergreen, so for all my optimism it would be disingenuous to preach that this is easy or even achievable for everyone.
Overall, if you want catharsis then this novel might not be for you, but if you want something raw and real then you’d be doing yourself a disservice to not pick up a copy. I only became aware of this book when I started working through the BBC Radio 4’s "The ten books we rarely get around to reading" challenge. While this was something I chose on a whim, this may be one of the greatest works I’ve ever read. Period.