A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara Book Review
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara finally so this is finally a book that I have been seeing all over social media if you are following a lot of bookish accounts and if you watch a lot of book tubers book influencers
I'm sure you must be aware that this book is the Talk of the Town like sort of so I'm so happy that I finally read this book and I'm going to share my thoughts on it so as you can see
I've annotated it quite a bit a little life is a story of four friends Jude Willem Malcolm and JB this story spans a few decades It begins when these four characters are in college they're doing their undergrad and it goes on till they are in their 50s
So we see them growing up from being unsure about themselves to becoming very successful in their respective professions and Fields this is one of the most disturbing books that I've ever read in my life and I'm not even exaggerating this book is very dark and heavy it deals
With so many triggering and traumatic themes pedophilia sexual harassment self-harm depression to name a few the thing about this book is that it has very beautiful prose and a very intricately woven story but at the same time it's extremely difficult to read as well because of how heavy it can get and how depressing it can get
As I told you there are four characters but the central character in this book is Jude Saint Francis and the other three friends Willem JB and Malcolm kind of revolve around him like they have their individual stories and lives but Jude is the center of their universe so Jude is exceedingly intelligent he's talented
He's charming and very very likable everybody like him a lot but Jude himself doesn't see the kind of positive impact he has on other people instead he has a very negative opinion of himself and that's because of the kind of experiences that he has had as a child and these experiences are revealed to the reader in different parts of the book
This book is divided in seven parts and when you read about what Jude went through in his life you recoil I mean there is no other way to say it because Jude goes through a lot a lot of terrible things and everything has been described in this book in detail all the themes that I mentioned that this book talks about all the traumatic themes have been covered in detail with their nuances being explained to the reader so if you are faint of heart do not pick this book up
I will be very honest the reason that I picked up this book was because of the hype that surrounded it and not because I was that interested in the story itself and I feel it's a legend legitimate reason as somebody who likes to read a lot I like to be up to speed with what's being considered a great read by my fellow readers
So I picked it up and it took me so long to read this book and not because it wasn't a page Turner but because I had to stop myself from reading it after something terrible would happen in this book and trust me a lot of terrible things happen in this book very very frequently okay so there are things that happen to Jude that we read about there are things that Jude does to himself the thing about this book is that it has a lot of disturbing things going on
But then there are some heartwarming and wholesome things as well and because this book is a well written book all over the heartwarming things are just simply amazing to read so I love reading about Jude and willem's bond
It's something very pure and special and it brought tears to my eyes more than once because I mean to experience a bond like this even through the pages of a book is an absolutely phenomenal experience and then I have to say that the characters are very well fleshed out all of them are quite memorable and all of them have like really solid personalities obviously some characters get more space in the story than others but still every character has been fleshed out really well and then when
It comes to reading about Jude if you keep the terrible stuff aside it's like his life is truly spectacular because everything that happens to him happens in extreme if bad things happen to him they are extremely bad but if good things happen to him they are spectacularly good and you are fascinated as a reader overall though this book exhausted me both mentally and emotionally and sometimes physically as well because I would feel
So terrible after reading it that I would sort of just curl into myself That was the kind of strong reaction that I had after reading this book while reading it and it's like yes some good things happen from time to time but mostly this book made me heartbroken sad angry and it made me feel hopeless and then this Loop of negative emotions would continue again and again and again and honestly it felt like an endless look to me and overall this book kind of gave me this experience that it was a journey that had
So many terrible experiences and no Redemption as another very prominent theme in this book is that of disability so the thing about this book was while reading it there were moments when I was so frustrated at how the characters were behaving but every single time
I started to form a judgmental opinion I would stop myself because honestly this book has certain serious themes that cannot be made light of at all and I haven't experienced those things myself so I did not have the heart to judge the characters in this book and that was a paradoxical situation because as a reader
It is nearly impossible to not form judgments about the characters that you are reading if you like to read books because you genuinely want to read a book that is being hailed as a literary Masterpiece a book that is possibly a modern classic then you have been warned about what that journey is going to entail so you should proceed at your own risk so that's it these were my thoughts on a little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
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THANK YOU SO MUCH
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