A Little Life by Hanya YanagiharaMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was given to me as a birthday gift from a very good friend. She had highly suggested I read it and thus bought it for me as a present. I love her very much and I appreciate her book choices but her and I read this book very differently. First, I would never buy this for someone as a gift. There are far too many triggers in this book...(child abuse, sex trafficking, self-harm, suicide) and I would never want to assume that someone wouldn't be triggered by them. Second, this book was extremely depressing and very hard to get through due to the subject material. My friend loved the author's style of writing and I agree but I don't think it was beautiful enough to distract me from the subject matter. I think this book is very interesting, in that, Yanagihara titles the 814-pg. novel "A Little Life" (slightly oxymoronic in my opinion), and that she focuses the story on someone whose life could be seen as insignificant but the author expounds on the idea that Jude's life was far from insignificant. Starting the novel, I felt it a task to feel connected to the characters, but less than a quarter of the way through the book, I was hooked into the storyline. I wanted and later needed to know what happened to this people, especially the "protagonist" Jude. Many times I did want to quit reading, when the subject matter made me cringe, bawl, or gag, but since my friend recommended it, I trucked on. I was glad that I finished the book as it gleams some form of conclusion and this book was very different from others I have read. I can't say that I'd recommend it to anyone, but it is a challenging read and probably important/interesting to students of literature.
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