A Little Life

A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and it's taken me quite a while to get around to writing anything about it. This is not because there's nothing to say about it, but rather that there's so much I could say, that I'm struggling to know where to start... Let's start with this: A Little Life is an absolute masterpiece. It will suck you in so that you stay up late at night reading. It will make you feel like you know the characters, like they are your friends, like you understand them - then it will tear out your heart, throw it on the floor and jump up and down on it so that you're sobbing in a corner. This will not be subtle crying; this is not eyes-welling-up-a-bit territory. This is soul-destroying, snot-nosed, making awful noises, rocking in a corner crying. Consider this fair warning.
A Little Life is beautiful, surprising, insightful , powerful and absolutely devastating.

This kind of crying. Do not read this book on public transport.

In the first few chapters, we meet four friends - charismatic aspiring actor Willem, earnest junior architect Malcolm, outgoing experimental artist J.B. and enigmatic lawyer Jude. Initially, A Little Life is a book about four friends in New York, but over time the narrative starts to focus more on one character in particular and we realise that actually, this is all about Jude. Jokingly called Jude the Postman by JB ("post-sexual, post-racial, post-identity, post-past") when the friends first meet at university, Jude is an orphan with leg braces and a mysterious past. As the four men get older, Jude's emotional problems become more obvious - he self-harms, he bluntly refuses to discuss anything prior to university, his love life is so discreet that nobody's even sure whether he prefers men or women. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn more about Jude's past and his problems become more understandable as the horror of his childhood becomes clear. At best, it's Dickensian childhood initially - abandoned amongst trash in an alleyway, baby Jude is taken in by a group of no-nonsense monks who raise him in a monastery with plenty of corporal punishment and an absence of affection. Not exactly an ideal environment for a child, but it gets much, much worse from here.

Seemingly at random, the narrative moves back and forward in time, slowly adding layer upon layer to each of the characters, especially Jude. The tense changes as well - sometime past, sometimes present - so that it's never quite clear when the story is being told from. Not only that, but the narration switches between different characters' points of view and even between first-person, third-person and even second-person narrative ("Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is. And after that, you have nothing to fear again"). This sounds like a messy, confusing tangle of crazy but it's not - it's so masterfully done that you don't even notice what's happening with the narrative because you're so caught up in the story and the characters.

Hanya Yanagihari - so very good at what she does.

In some ways it's so easy to read - Hanya Yanagihara's simple, heartfelt writing keeps the pages turning until you suddenly realise it's 3am and you need to get up in two hours (there aren't many 700+ page books that I'd describe as page-turners, but this is one of them). On the other hand, this is a really, really difficult read. A Little Life pulls no punches. Jude's early life is absolutely horrifying and his traumas are recounted in awful detail, in passages that are so very painful to read. Even the title of the book hurts - it's referenced in a few different places earlier in the book to refer to Jude's concept of his small, broken, limited existence; sometimes in a negative way (that is, that he'll never be able to live a proper, full life like those around him) and sometimes a positive way (that maybe a nice, little life is not so much to ask for and maybe it might be achievable). Later in the book, in a flashback to Jude's childhood, the phrase "a little life" is used in a whole different way and it quite literally takes your breath away. Not in a good way. In a someone-just-punched-you-in-the-gut-and-you-might-vomit kind of way. I won't say any more about this, but when you get there, you'll know it. I have never been so emotionally affected by a book in my life.

The storyline of A Little Life would be easy to scoff at. Jude's childhood is so awful, the abuse he's subjected to so completely abhorrent that it would be easy to brush off as over-dramatic. In adulthood, things take a turn for the overwhelmingly positive with Jude and his friends becoming, rich, successful, famous... Is it realistic? Probably not. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. The novel works beautifully and the relationships at the heart of it all are wonderfully written.
In parts, A Little Life is a touching celebration of the importance of friendship: "Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?".  The relationships between Jude, Willem, Malcolm and JB are heartfelt, nuanced, unique and so very believable. Each of the characters is so complex and well-detailed that you really do feel like they're real people with real thoughts and ambitions and experiences, none more so than Jude himself.
Jude is intelligent and sweet and earnest and so very broken. As a reader, seeing Jude through his friends' eyes it's so clear and easy to see why they all love him; from Jude's point of view though, it's also easy to see why he finds this impossible to understand. This is a man struggling to make a life for himself after being almost destroyed by events he should never have had to live through. All you want for Jude is for things to go well, and for him to believe that he deserves it.

Jude, Willem, Malcolm & JB. Like this, but more multi-cultural and fifty years younger.

There was a news story a few weeks ago about the child welfare organisation meant to help kids like Jude here in New Zealand. According to the latest report, 117 children were abused in 2013/2014 while in CYF custody. I'm sure I would've thought this appalling anyway, but in the immediate aftermath of reading A Little Life, I've found this absolutely horrifying. 117 abused children, feeling as lost and worthless as Jude did. 117 children growing up into broken adults like Jude. 117 people who may never get over the things that have happened to them. Obviously, it's 117 too many but I feel like A Little Life gives these kids something of a voice - these are 117 little lives, not just numbers in a report.

I guess that's my main takeaway from this book - it stays with you. It affects the way you look at people and the way you look at life. It's sweet and beautifully-written and heart-warming and heart-breaking all at the same time. Nominated for the Man Booker prize this year, A Little Life absolutely deserves to win.

10/10

A God in Ruins

A God in Ruins (2015)
by Kate Atkinson

I should probably start by saying that I didn't actually like this book much to start with. A God in Ruins follows on from Kate Atkinson's 2014 novel Life After Life, the fantastic, quirkily-told story of Ursula Todd, who gets to start her life over and over again, dying in a number of different ways but then getting another chance to do things differently (resulting in all sorts of differing consequences). A "companion piece" rather than a sequel, A God in Ruins follows the life of Ursula's much-loved little brother Teddy from childhood through his years as a World War 2 bomber pilot and into old age. The unique oops-I-died-let's-try-that-again structure of the earlier book is notably absent; instead A God in Ruins is a more straightforward retelling of a man's life. I loved Life After Life, so spent the first few chapters of this book getting increasingly frustrated that Teddy only seemed to be getting one go at life, while the plotline jumped all over the place (one chapter we're in the 1920s, the next it's fifty years later, then we're back in the middle of WW2 again...). I almost gave up on this book completely but I'm so glad I stuck with it. About a third of the way through the book, it stopped being hard work. By halfway, I was kind of enjoying it. By the time I finished it, A God in Ruins had become one of my absolute favourite books. Do not give up on this book.

The scale of A God in Ruins is enormous. Over the life of one man, it covers almost 100 years of history and four generations (Teddy's parents, Teddy himself, his daughter Viola and his grandchildren Sunny and Bertie) with a huge cast of well-developed characters. A God in Ruins doesn't follow any kind of standard chronological order - instead we skip back and forward throughout Teddy's life, as the narrative jumps randomly from one point in time to another and then back again. It's disorienting and a little frustrating to start with (just as you start to get a handle on what's happening, the story shifts to a completely different character in a different time and place) but it's masterfully done. Each fragment of the story adds another layer to each of the characters and sheds a bit more light on the relationships between them, the interactions rich in convincing and sometimes heartbreaking little details - ""Daddy!" Bertie shouted, barrelling past... "Hey", their father said, taking a step backward as if his daughter might be attacking him".
This creates an absolute masterpiece of a novel where the characters feel like real people who you know and love.

Not only does A God in Ruins introduce a fabulous set of characters and tell a fascinating story, it's also beautifully written. Teddy nurses ambitions to be a poet and sees the world in his own unique way - this lends a certain charm to his thoughts and colours everything in the book, even those passages that you wouldn't normally expect to be described so poetically. For example, in the middle of a high-adrenaline scene during a bombing raid: "At one thousand feet they could see the white horses on the crests of the waves. Fifteen, perhaps twenty foot high. Tempest-tossed, Teddy thought" or "They had been awestruck not only by the sight of the Alps by moonlight but by the depthless inky-black skies, pricked with thousands upon thousands of stars - bright seed broadcast by some dangerous god, Teddy thought, drifting dangerously close to the forsaken realm of poetry" Teddy's self-deprecating attitude towards his own literary ambitions helps these passages to ring true without seeming pretentious or out of place. It's very clever.

A Halifax bomber (less famous cousin of the Lancaster) like those flown by Teddy. Around 50% of bomber crews died. 

A God in Ruins is the story of one man's life, all of the people he meets along the way and all of the ripples he creates in the world. It's also a story about World War 2 and it's a really, really good one complete with a number of absolute edge-of-your-seat moments as Teddy's crew joins bombing raids over Europe, with planes falling from the sky all around them. Hit a few times but never down for long, Teddy is one of the very few to survive the war and the following decades of his life somehow underscore the terrible waste of so many other lives: "Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on, all the way back to the Garden where Cain killed Abel. All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in the imagination" All those young men dead (Teddy describes them rather brutally as birds thrown at a brick wall), who might've gone on to live long and complex lives like Teddy's - all those futures wasted. It's not a new message when it comes to war novels, but Kate Atkinson puts an original and affecting spin on it.

The title of the novel comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote "A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams" Teddy is complex and at times misunderstood, but he's ultimately a good man in the final stages of a very long life. It may be true that a gentle "passing into the immortal" is the most that any of us can hope for but I would challenge anyone to reach the end of A God in Ruins and contemplate Teddy's impending death without a tear in your eye. I'll say no more about the ending itself, except that it will surprise you and it might just break your heart.

I could not recommend this book more highly - it is absolutely brilliant (and if you haven't already done so, read Life After Life; it's fantastic too).

10/10

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey (2010)

by Jasper Fforde


Jasper Fforde is nothing if not original. He writes in a way that makes the most ridiculous things seem perfectly normal. The Big Over Easy, for example, is a detective story written in a noir style, featuring hard-nosed officer Jack Spratt as he investigates the murder of Humpty Dumpty. This is not a children's book; it's a fast-moving, absorbing murder mystery that just happens to include (for no apparent reason) a cast of nursery rhyme characters. Beginning with The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next series follows the misadventures of Agent Tuesday Next, who investigates literary crimes. You know, crimes that happen in books. She goes into literature, interacts with the characters in said books and solves crimes for them. She also has a pet dodo, as you do.
Shades of Grey is another brilliantly written, inventive and original novel, worlds apart from that other book with the similar name.



Shades of Grey is set several hundred years in the future in a post-apocalyptic England, where humans have lost most of their ability to perceive colour and your place in the social hierarchy is determined by which colours you're able to see. Most people can only see one colour (maybe two if you're lucky, none at all if you're a miserably unlucky Grey) with different colours carrying different levels of esteem. Narrator Eddie Russet is a middle-class Red, who aims to move up the social ladder a bit by marrying higher-class Constance Oxblood. Sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a "chair census", Eddie meets temperamental, hot-headed and occasionally violent Jane, one of the lowest-of-the-low Greys. As Eddie becomes somewhat infatuated with Jane, he runs afoul of the local authorities and begins to question the rules and laws at the very heart of his society.

Parts of Shades of Grey are deeply creepy. It's a very Orwellian perspective on the future, with a totalitarian government ruling the people with an iron fist, pedantic rules and strict laws enforced with threats of violence and some lives (those of the Greys, in particular) worth very little. Those who don't follow the rules tend to disappear and while their fates aren't exactly known, it's pretty clear that things haven't ended well for them. It's not all dark though - Jasper Fforde's distinctive humour keeps things from getting too dark and adds a quirky, decidedly British flavour to things. There are tea shops on every corner, there's a severe jam shortage and cutlery is no longer being produced, so teaspoons are prized possessions. As Eddie says, despite the evils of the world around him, "there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea".
Every know and then random remnants are found from the present world and wildly misinterpreted - for example, the only remaining "map" is a copy of the boardgame Risk, leading to a slightly warped idea of what the world might have been like in the time before "The Something That Happened". There are government-ordered "Leapbacks" every few years, in which various previously-approved technologies are banned (like telephones, or cutlery, or indoor lighting) much to the confusion and frustration of the general population.

Well, it's not wrong, exactly...

Jasper Fforde walks a fine line between comedy and dark futuristic fantasy with plenty of political satire thrown in for good measure. He is incredibly good at what he does and Shades of Grey is a fantastic read - compelling, dramatic and exciting, but also genuinely funny. There's some serious subject matter in there that will really make you think, but Fforde's light-hearted tone prevents it from all becoming too much. Right from the first paragraph, the wry humour sets the tone: "It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself - I'd hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio and explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient."

A yateveo tree. Doesn't look like a particularly pleasant way to go.

Like any good Jasper Fforde book, Shades of Grey is strange, compelling and delightful. It's packed full of clever little details, making this completely oddball idea of a chromatically-based apartheid seem perfectly believable on not just a little bit horrifying. The only part that's a little frustrating is just how long it seems to take Eddie to realise that things aren't quite right - hey, maybe chromatically-based slavery isn't such a great thing after all! Maybe people should be able to marry outside of their own colour! Maybe all those mysteriously disappearing people aren't going to some nice farm somewhere! As a reader, you figure out what's going on quite some time before poor old Eddie does. But that's a minor criticism of a book that's otherwise quite spectacular.

The wonderfully weird Jasper Fforde

Apparently there's a sequel to be released in 2016, which can't come soon enough, as far as I'm concerned. Give Jasper Fforde a go - I guarantee you've never read anything quite like his books ever before.

9/10

In the Unlikely Event

In the Unlikely Event (2015)
by Judy Blume

When I was eleven years old, Judy Blume was my absolute favourite author. I adored her. I read every single one of her books (or at least, every one published prior to 1992) - I know this, because I ticked them off on a list I'd made. Arguably a little bit tragic, but I was completely devoted to all things Blume. So, when I heard she'd released a new novel this year (and adult novel, even), I was all sorts of excited. And much like the books I loved in childhood, In the Unlikely Event is a fantastically absorbing story, although in this case it's a story focused around the frightening events of Judy Blume's own adolescence.

In the early 1950's, three commercial airliners crashed in Judy Blume's hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey within a period of just eight weeks, killing 118 people. In the Unlikely Event tells a fictionalised version of the real-life events, seen mostly through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Miri Ammerman. The short chapters switch narrators, including viewpoints from Miri and her friends, as well as their parents, grandparents and other adults in town, even down to chapters narrated by passengers on the doomed airliners. Most of the action, though, revolves around Miri - she's a spirited, independent teenager (reminiscent of a number of the characters from Judy Blume's earlier YA novels) from a single-parent family. Surrounded by great friends and devoted to mysterious new boyfriend Mason, Miri's life is pretty well derailed by the series of crashes.
As planes continue to fall on their town, the people of Elizabeth are panicked and confused - conspiracy theories abound and petitions are drawn up. In the aftermath of the crashes, people's attitudes begin to change too, with some relationships crumbling and others blooming (get it?) as priorities and beliefs are turned upside down.

In the Unlikely Event is chock-full of detail, bringing 1950s America to life in full colour. Clearly I don't have personal experience of 1950s America, but this all seemed completely convincing to me (and educational. Who knew there were fax machines in the 1950s?). There are so many rich little details in every chapter - things like jukeboxes, angora sweaters, Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, Oldsmobile cars, rumours of Commies and A-Bombs...
None of this comes across as cheesy or contrived; it's just a completely convincing portrait of a very particular time and place.

 

Priorities in the airline industry were arguably a little different in the 1950s...

The short chapters and regular switches between characters work well to keep the story short, punchy and interesting, despite it being a relatively long book at 397 pages. This unique style gives the reader a glimpse into the lives and stories of a number of different people, but also means that there's not a particularly clear over-arching storyline. Each of the characters has their own story happening and the structure of In the Unlikely Event gives the reader a real slice-of-life view of a whole community during an incredibly challenging time; like the coming-of-age story of an entire town.

Reporting on the real-life events in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

This can't have been an easy book for Judy Blume to write, but I'm so glad that she did. Like so many other Judy Blume books, it's an absorbing and entertaining coming-of-age story but it's also a sweet and heart-felt tribute to her hometown and a series of terrible events that happened there. Clearly it's a topic close to the author's heart. In the book, she writes:
"After enough time it fades and you're grateful.
Not that it's ever completely gone.
It's still there, buried deep, a part of you.
The stench is gone from your nostrils now
Unless someone leaves the kettle on to boil and forgets about it.
The nightmares have tapered out.
There are more pressing things to dream about, to worry over, to keep you awake at night.
Aging parents, adolescent children, work, money, the state of the world.
Life goes on, as our parents promised that winter.
Life goes on if you're one of the lucky ones.
But we're still part of a secret club,
One we'd never willingly join,
With members who have nothing in common except a time and a place.
We'll always be connected by that winter.
Anyone who tells you different is lying."

Now 77 years old, Judy Blume has implied that In the Unlikely Event could be her final novel. I sincerely hope that's not the case - the world is a better place with Judy Blume books in it.

10/10

The Interestings

The Interestings (2013)
by Meg Wolitzer



A lot of the books I love are kind of unusual - they tend to include things like interplanetary soul-sucking weirdos (like The Bone Clocks), or terrifying insects (like The Bees), or even re-imagined fairy tale characters (like the fabulous The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde). The Interestings isn't one of these books. It's about a group of fairly normal (if a little upper-class and pretentious) American friends, their lives and their relationships. And yet, it's nothing if not - well - interesting.

When we meet the main characters of The Interestings, they're self-involved teenagers at an exclusive summer art camp, smoking pot and airily discussing literature. Ethan, Cathy, Ash, Goodman and Jonah are the cool kids at camp - beautiful, privileged and hugely talented. And then there's Jules Jacobson, our protagonist. Blotchy-skinned, poodle-haired and not particularly talented, Jules comes from a decidedly non-posh family in New Jersey, attending the camp on a scholarship and unexpectedly taken under Ash's wing, she becomes a member of this clique, who (with some irony) name themselves "The Interestings" : "From this day forward, because we are clearly the most interesting people who ever fucking lived...because we are just so fucking compelling, our brains swollen with intellectual thoughts, let us be known as the Interestings. And let everyone who meets us fall down dead in our path from just how fucking interesting we are."    

The Interestings follows the teenagers' lives from this point on, as they struggle (and occasionally succeed) in their careers and relationships, from high school, through university and young adulthood, through marriages and children and career changes and divorces and illnesses and deaths, to well into middle age.

Summer Camp in the 1970s - presumably something like this...

Throughout the book, the narrative switches back and forth between most of the six characters, which works seamlessly to flesh out each of the characters and to better explain the complex relationships between them. The main character though, is Jules and somehow she manages to be the most interesting of them all, despite leading what arguably turns out to be the least interesting life. As a teenager at camp, she worshipped the other five from afar, before unexpectedly becoming one of them. Despite their continuing friendship over the following decades, Jules always feels different and this gives her a unique viewpoint on her friends. The relationship between Jules and her lifelong friend Ash is particularly well-written, with genuine love and affection coupled with a niggling undercurrent of envy and resentment.

Like, so very happy for your friend and her awesome lunch but also a little bit tempted to punch her in the face and steal it.

In her first summer with The Interestings, Jules develops a new outlook on life, deciding that nothing is more important than the whole-hearted pursuit of artistic and creative ambition - that the meaning of life is to be successful and to stand out. To be extraordinary. As she devotes herself to a failing acting career while her friends achieve financial and artistic success, Jules becomes a seething mass of jealousy/happiness; she is genuinely pleased for her friends, but she's also incredibly disappointed that it's not happening for her. But then, as her perfectly-happy-just-being-average husband says, "Specialness - everyone wants it. But Jesus, is it the most essential thing there is? Most people aren't talented. So what are they supposed to do - kill themselves?".

It's a great question and one of the themes at the heart of The Interestings - that is, what about those of us who aren't particularly interesting? Can we still be happy if we're not extraordinary?

As Jules herself says, "You didn't always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up, or made everyone want to sleep with you, or be the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting."

The Interestings is a fabulously well-written novel, that details some very believable relationships between very believable characters across a really quite interesting period of time - America over the past forty years. At 560 pages, forty years and six main characters, The Interestings is a long and complicated book but it's never boring or confusing. It's packed full of thought-provoking themes around ambition and aging and feminism, to name just a few. It's a clever, witty and well-written novel, which I would highly recommend and (it really does have to be said) it's just interesting.

9/10