Ein wenig Leben Roman
Reviews
It's the most hurtful book I've ever read in my life but I truly did love that book
Fuck this book
a masterpiece. however, not anymore. traumatic book.. my tears really drained but this book gives a different perspective on grief, trauma and life, can't describe how amazing it is how Hanya Yanagihara describes each character and character so perfectly, love <3
While I understand the “trauma porn” take on this book: I personally loved it. I will always make sure that a potential reader checks tw’s and is down for a devastating read, but after that I think it’s an incredible story and a heartbreaking experience.
I love split perspective books and stories that provoke intense emotion. I loved this
Okay even from the get-go this book is so melodramatic which is not for me, but the funny thing is what actually made me abruptly lose interest was in Part 2 when Jude for kinda no reason asserts that abortion is “indefensible on moral grounds but necessary on social ones” 🙄like, ok 👍🏻 what a judgmental, pretentious, fake smart thing to say lolol (that also has nothing to do with anything, plot-wise?)
a very emotional read
This is equally the most heartbreaking and best book I've ever read. I've seen many reviews saying this is unbelievable that this many bad things can't happen to one person and it was made up just for the shock factor. This stuff does happen to every day people. There are people like Jude who have gone through unspeakable horrors, people like Willem who you only think their backstory was made up because of who they became. Following these four friends through life and seeing how the friendships ebb and flow was an honor even though these men were just made for paper. I feel like you can find a piece of yourself in each man, more in some than the others. A wonderful book that evokes every emotion under the sun.
The writing in this book is absolutely beautiful. I was drawn into the story immediately. The descriptions of the characters were amazing, I almost felt like I knew some of them personally. This book really describes the true love and devotion of friendship and chosen family. It also follows the brutal realities of life and the trials and triumphs that we as humans go through. It’s a book that might not be for everyone, but I found it to be hauntingly beautiful. This book is truly devastating, I was in tears for a good portion of the time while reading. Please look up the trigger warnings for this book before reading, there are a lot. I think about Jude St. Francis every single day.
Disclaimer: this is not a review.
I have 50 pages left but I overdosed on it and simply don't have the strength to finish it today. Still I want to simbolically leave it in 2024. This book is just devastating. And any other thoughts I would maybe form around it, are clouded by how heavy it is. Which doesn't sound good. Still, there must be a reason I read 700 pages of it.
I am so glad to be finally finished with this so I can have definitive own opinion for it. I am so brave for this, such an independent thinker, so controversial but so true, etc.
Firstly, can I start off with the fact that famous takedown article and the reviews calling it "euthanasia" fanfiction are sort of true but after having read the novel itself, seem a little bit overly hyperbolistic? It is not that there is nothing there but I feel like sometimes dunk on the novel without really trying to analyse why exactly the depiction of - let's be honest - suffering in the novel comes off so cheap to some and why it works for others. This an immensely successful novel that is pretty firmly central to the literary conversation - surely this is worth examining?
On my own thoughts, I would like to start with Yanagihara's prose itself. Her turn of phrase and use of language is gorgeous; it is clear that she is incredibly erudite in a manner that does not come off as pretentious. There is a lulling quality to the narration, in the way the words fall one after the other. An absolute paradise for people who enjoy long sentences, benefitting of multiple instances of punctiation, without losing their sense. (The downside here, of course, is that, due to the length of the novel, and if one does not find particular interest or pleasure in the plot, the writing begins to appear too long. There is also a talent and skill in brevity).
Beyond that, is this a bad novel? Well, it is not the worst. I am not sure whether it is because I have read a lot and because I tend to read broadly but I cannot say that I found anything that I particularly connected with or elicited a strong emotion from me. It is unfortunate but by now I have encountered many instances of cruelty that made me flinch away but also somehow prepared me for this novel. (And, I would suggest, the sheer amount of trauma that Jude, in particular, undergoes risks desensetising the reader to it. It is not writter for shock value but after a while it loses impact all the same.)
And therein lies the division in opinion for the novel, in my view.
Why do we write about suffering? For some, it offers great release - to receive catharsis through second-hand experience, second-hand extreme emotions (not unlike horror). For others, there is an interesting psychological or sociological examination to be presented. For some, even, there is pleasure to be derived (whether this tips into torture porn or not).
"A Little Life" is a novel that concerns itself with the act of suffering itself. The cruelties and acts of senseless violence, the constant emotional and physical pain Jude endures are as long as the list of ships in <i>The Iliad</i>. And as the novel offers no examination of the reasons why Jude, in particular, was uniquely vulnerable to life's cruelties, this becomes a novel that seek the catharsis of the reader.
I do not want to argue whether this is exploitative - of gay people, of socially vulnerable people, of people with chronic illnesses and/or disabilities; though this is the social context within which the novel has been released and it is a worthwhile effort to discuss it, I do not currently feel prepared enough to delve into it. What is a more succint conclusion for myself about the way this novel functions is this: if the writing does not connect to the reader, so much to offer them emotional release, it can quickly tip into apparent torture porn. If neither of those are a reason for reading, the novel then cannot be much of a pleasurable experience.
This was the case for me. To me, there was a disconnect between the litany of cruelties to which Jude is subjected and why someone would be uniquely positioned so. The narrative is so squarelly focused on Jude's suffering, it feels like the misfortunes of others (even Willem's loss of his brother or Harold's loss of his son) is to add to it by way of shaping their relationships with him. Here, the novel truly loses its effect with a reader such as myself; due to the sheer amount of misfortune and the exceptional cruelty, at some point, the novel tips into caricature. It becomes simply too difficult to take it with the seriousness it seems to demand.
I could elaborate more on each of the points above but frankly, it is NYE day and I have better things to do, and the above briefly captures what I find interesting about the novel and what may or may have not worked for me. Maybe I can pick this up another time but I have not kept many notes and I doubt I will ever re-read it.
P.S. Yanagihara hates fat people, change my mind.
hurt a little too much
sad. beautiful but so painfully sad.
Mit unendlichem Leid, können keine Gefühle erzwungen werden.
The magnum opus of sadness. This book broke me. It’s hauntingly beautiful yet concomitantly devastating. I’ve never thought a book would genuinely shatter my heart to pieces but here I am, still crying as we speak. I think I’ll never be the same anymore.
if you value your mental health, avoid this book. if you’re like me and you don’t, please read it because it has broken me as a human (in a good way?). also genuinely all the trigger warnings needed
I will have to say it's well-written but I got tired of it near the end. It can get repetitive, and it's very, very, long.
I also didn't cry, but that's more on me than on the book.
Otherwise, I thought it painted a nice picture of male companionship. The title drop was was also masterfully executed, and quite unforgettable. Keep your eyes peeled for it, that's all I ask of you.
Haunting. Beautiful. Raw.
I went in thinking “I never cry at books. Everyone’s being dramatic.”
Dearest gentle reader - they are not being dramatic.
I am missing characters as if they existed. Just a beautiful story of friendship, pain, healing, and loss. Please, please pick it up.
watched the stage play and i do not need to emotionally go through that again goodbye
The best and worst book there ever was or will be. Took me months to finish it. It is a literary equivalent of someone stabbing you with a knife and twisting it and twisting it.
Best of luck to anyone who reads it.
no one can save a person who thinks he/she doesn't deserve to be saved
Highlights
“If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: thing get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.
…he sometimes wished he had a mind like JB’s, one that could create stories that would delight others, instead of the mind he did have, which was always searching for an explanation, and explanation that, while perhaps correct, was empty of romance, of fancy, of wit.
me too Jude
He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people be loved fall in love with other people he loved.
that sounds wonderful
“The world has two kinds of people,” Judge Sullivan used to say. “Those who are inclined to believe, and those who aren’t. In my courtroom, we value belief. Belief in all things.”
And although he tried everyday to remember the promise he’d made to her, every day it became more and more remote, until it was just a memory, and so was she, a beloved character from a book he’d read long ago.
“The easiest explanations are often the right ones,” his math professor, Dr. Li, always said…
Friendship, companionship: it so often defied logic, so often eluded the deserving, so often settled itself on the odd, the bad, the peculiar, the damaged.
“I just think he’s not—“ happy, he nearly said. But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain partly because it was too difficult to articulate?
He walked to the ocean and above him the moon disappeared, concealed by tattered rags of clouds, and for a few moments he could only hear the water, not see it, and the sky was thick and warm with moisture, as if the very air here were denser, more significant.
sounds nice, peaceful
…when the others were asleep, each in his own bed, in his own room with his own bathroom (the house was that big), he crept outside and walked the web of roads surrounding the house for hours, the moon so large and bright it seemed made of something liquid and frozen.
A walk like this sounds nice. A quiet night, listening to the sound of the world asleep, the silence. Feeling the night’s breeze your skin while basking in the calm moonlight. (Even if it wasn’t what this character was doing— I can still imagine it being nice)
Perhaps because of this, he felt he always knew who and what he was, which is why, as he moved farther and then further away from the ranch and his childhood, he felt very little pressure to change or reinvent himself. He was a guest at his college, a guest in graduate school, and now he was a guest in New York, a guest in the lives of the beautiful and the rich. He would never try to pretend he was born to such things, because he knew he wasn’t; he was a ranch hand’s son from Wyoming and his leaving didn’t mean that everything he had once been was erased, written over by time and experiences and the proximity to mony.
I may not be a ranch hand’s son from Wyoming, but I understand what he means when he says/thinks this, and it is and often can be very relatable.
He knew he wasn’t lazy, but the truth was that he lacked the sort of ambition that JB and Jude had, that grim, trudging determination that kept them a the studio or office longer than anyone else, that gave them that slight faraway look in their eyes that always made him think a fraction of them was already living in some imagines future, the contours of which were crystallized only to them.
I can totally relate to this
But these were the days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.
When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop?
An artist, as much as a writer or composer, needed themes, needed ideas.
Everyone had feelings that they knew better than to act upon because they knew that doing so would make life so much more complicated.
“I think you’re doing just fine. I know I give you a hard time about settling down, and I agree with Malcolm’s dad that couplehood is wonderful, but all you really have to do is just be a good person, which you already are, and enjoy your life. You’re young. You have years and years to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live.”
“You won’t understand what I mean now but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are— not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving— and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad— or good— it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well”
..having a child, I thought, was something you should actively want, crave, even. It was not a venture for the ambivalent or passionaless.
He will be reminded of how trapped he is, trapped in a body he hates, with a past he hates, and how he will never be able to change either.
This book appears on the shelf Eng
This book appears on the shelf Mg
