A Little Life

I finished reading the 720 pages of Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life this morning and I had to blog about it because I found the book so fascinating.

First, this is a terribly depressing book that deals with sexual and physical abuse of a child, so anyone thinking of reading this book should be aware of this. That being said, the largely self-inflicted mental and physical abuse of the character who's been abused, Jude, is equally (if not more) destructive than what he suffered as a child. Jude just puts himself through such turmoil that I found it hard to believe that he, as an adult, was able to become a successful attorney. Apparently he's the kind of person who can compartmentalize his life in such a way that he's one person at work and an entirely different person outside of the office.

Second, the jacket flap of A Little Life says that it focuses on the lives of four friends (Malcolm, JB, Willem, and Jude) but that's not entirely true. The book largely focuses on Jude and Willem. JB and Malcolm are given the short shrift here (Malcolm more so than JB) and my theory about this is that Yanagihara just wasn't comfortable writing for non-white characters. Malcolm, who's biracial (black father, white mother) is barely given any ink in the book. I don't know if his wife was white (I suspect she was--her name was Sophie, for God's sake) and I don't really have any idea how he felt as a biracial man with largely white friends. And JB, the Hatian-American guy, is presented as a man who has a fetish for white men. He wishes he could be Jude (who's supposed to be racially ambiguous, but really isn't--more about that later) even though Jude is physically disabled and a mental mess, JB still sees something in him that he wants and wants to be. Everyone focuses on Jude's self-loathing, but what about JB's? For JB, being white and being with white men seem to be his (unattainable) goals in life. His life, and largely his artwork, focuses on white men, yet this isn't really explored in the novel.

Third, I have read reviews of A Little Life that refer to it as a post-racial novel. It's not post-racial. Race is just pushed into the background, I suspect, by the author in an attempt to make (white) readers feel more at ease. Jude, who's described as being racially ambiguous (perhaps he's supposed to be half Native American or something, but this is never explored), but he isn't really. If he's not 100% white, he's certainly treated as a white man which means he certainly must look like a white man. To even throw racial ambiguity into the mix seems unnecessary here, almost an afterthought by the author, who's Asian herself and clearly knows what it's like to be a racial minority. (Asians don't feature prominently in the novel at all. There are a few on the peripheral, but none of the major characters are of Asian descent, something I found interesting.)

Fourth, despite my issues with the racial aspects of the novel, I did find it fascinating. Jude and Willem's relationship is certainly the best "gay for you" male romance I've never read about. Jude's brief relationship with Caleb was like a train wreck. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. One thing that bothered me throughout the novel was that as the characters aged, they didn't seem to change mentally. The 20-something Jude sounded exactly like the 40-something Jude and the same went for the other characters (Willem, JB, Harold, etc.). No one seemed to mature and I thought that was odd. Different things happened in their lives as they grew older, but they seemed to remain mentally the same. Also, I don't think I've read a novel where the words "I'm sorry" were used so much. If I had this book on my Kindle, I would have done a search to see how many times "I'm sorry" appears in the book. It must be hundreds of times. It seems like every time Jude opens his mouth, he's apologizing to someone.

Yanagihara knows how to tell a story and she knows how to keep readers engaged so the pages keep turning. Yes, A Little Life is at times a little too long, but it's an interesting look at functional and dysfunctional relationships between men.