A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara book review

A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara is a book that I’d been hearing incredibly sad things about for months. After reposting my monthly follower choice reads over on my Instagram, every single time, someone would make a comment “A Little Life is going to ruin you”. So when I finally got around to reading it, I had both high hopes but also tempered expectations due to hype.

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A Little Life chronicles the lives of four friends—Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm—navigating adulthood in New York City. Central to the narrative is Jude, whose traumatic past and struggles with self-harm and chronic pain profoundly affect his relationships and career. A theme that repetitively beats you down as the reader whenever you think something positive might be about to happen.

A Little Life plot – 4.25/5

A Little Life is one of those books that you can thoroughly appreciate. Yanigahara’s writing is brilliant and incredibly powerful and the topics covered throughout the story are also important and powerful. The writing could probably have done with some editing down, I don’t think the book needed to be anywhere near as long as it was.

The big issue for me was the way that it made me feel. As I noted above, A Little Life almost exclusively focuses on Jude (eventually) and the awful things that happen to him throughout his life. Usually, I’m fine with this – I’ve read books about dark and troubling topics before. However, inthis instance it just felt reptitive to a point where it felt unrealistic. Almost everywhere Jude goes or is sent he meets the worst and darkest of humanity and has numerous experiences that some people may never even bear witness to once in their lives.

This constant and insistent negativity had me, as the reader feeling like I just couldn’t enjoy myself.

“So why have you given the plot such a respectable 4.25/5 then Luke?” I hear you say. Well, because of how much I can appreciate the book as a whole. Yes, I came out of it glad it was finished and hoping to never have to read it again, but the writing, the powerful topics, the underlying theme of friendship and the rawness of it all is something that over time I have come to massively respect.

A Little Life characters – 4.25/5

A core element to A Little Life are the people involved. As I mentioned, there are four main protagonists but Jude is the one that 80% of the book focuses on with the others receiving fleeting storylines interwoven throughout.

I really struggle to know whether I enjoyed the people in this book or not and then I ask myself, as I always do with these reviews, “were the characters a main reason I have any emotion towards the book?” And the answer is yes.

Jude, though I obviously feel sorry for him had a constantly negative and frustrating attitude. I can thoroughly understand that nothing in his life has gone well, he has absolutely no reason to trust people. But his constant aggression towards pushing people away, not allowing people to comfort him, not allowing people to support or help him had me feeling incredibly frustrated. Is this a really well-written character? Yes, I believe so.

As well as this, there are other characters along the way, the other three main protagonists who I could take or leave – their presence simply served as “companionship” to Jude and to be those who try to help him and support him through but whom I just couldn’t grow attached to. I could appreciate their passion in some attempts, but inevitably them not having their own lives had me struggling to connect to them in any way other than Jude’s crutch.

Again, you may ask why I’ve given such a high rating and I harken back to my comment about Jude being a well-written character. This book is all about the people involved and I wouldn’t have come away feeling so utterly devoid of optimism if I didn’t feel like these people I was reading about were actual people!

A Little Life final rating – 4.25/5

If you look anywhere online where I’ve spoken about A Little Life it’ll mostly sound like I disliked the book and though I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it as much as many people say they did, I can’t sit here and say it’s a bad book. I didn’t enjoy my time with it because it was consistently and, unrealistically at times, depressing and I think it could probably have been edited down by a third but I can fully appreciate the great writing, powerful story, deeply emotive topics and affect this has had on a lot of people. A Little Life isn’t for the feint-hearted… or maybe it is.