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