Book Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

I'll start by saying it's been a while since a book got so into my head that it made me lose sleep and sometimes forget to distinguish between the fictional story and my real life. That's a feat, and to me the mark of a talented author. This book keeps you constantly in a state of emotional suspense, riding on a figurative rollercoaster with amazing highs and then very scary downward trajectories that bring you to some very low lows. It is a long book, but 100% worth the journey.

Disclaimer: Books like these are difficult to read, especially if you have any abuse trauma in your past, or are close with someone who experienced it. But. For this very reason, I think for anyone wanting to understand what trauma really is and how it can have far-reaching effects into your adulthood (oftentimes even in spite of any personal success), this book gives you the ability to almost truly empathize for the first time, and the first book to have helped me do that.  I say almost because I would never want to discredit someone who's been through abuse and pretend I could ever truly understand. But this book brought me closer than anything ever has. The author crafts a solid story line with effortless composition and literary choices, making it an easy book to float through. And sometimes very difficult to keep going because it's too easy to sink into the story it becomes too real.

Aside from helping me understand abuse and trauma, this book also had beautiful passages that really tackled and nailed some fundamental journey into adulthood themes we all go through: the awkwardness of your 20s and 30s where, inevitably, friends all begin choosing life paths that are hard to consolidate anymore; the loneliness of feeling like good friends become casual acquaintances; the sadness of realizing some friends never caught up in the life game; the realization that marriage and relationships are a different beast than you were taught all your life and no one's doing it quite right; the despair of feeling like something is off decades later when looking back at your life. It felt like a journey through life (you watch the characters grow from college 20-something-year-olds to well-established, successful 50-year-olds), and not an easy one to witness, but hauntingly beautiful. All wrapped into one book.

That being said, the only negative parts of this book were more literary writing choices--one being the fact that this author went to an ivy league school and lived in New York City, and she makes it PLAINLY evident that she knows every fine wine, niche foodie restaurant, refined composer, trendy artist and basically she needs you to know she is ever-so-refined in her tastes. She throws in casual esoteric references to food and culture every other page and can't help herself. It's off-putting.

The second negative aspect of the writing in this book is the author's deliberate choice to overdo every intensely physical, traumatic or abusive scene. I read interviews with the author, and she explicitly states that she wanted everything to be "a little too much." In some ways, I understand this choice. I do think part of the goal of this book is jarring you as a reader into understanding what abuse and trauma feel like, but I also thought it was too gratuitous and there were TOO many sad things the main character goes through. Is anyone really likely to experience so much bad luck in one lifetime? Seems unlikely and mildly threatened the validity of the story, which could have felt more authentic without this.

Lastly, 800 pages was just too long for what the book sought to accomplish. In the interviews with the author, she mentions that her publisher had to fight with her to get her manuscript from roughly 1000 pages down to 800+. As the book stands, it could have been shaved down another 150-200 pages and been a more complete, intact book this way.

All said and done, I think this book was incredibly worth a once-time read. Again, the goal of books is to help you as a reader experience emotions, thoughts and perspectives you may never experience except through the eyes of a fictional character. And this one nailed it in this aspect. You feel changed in some way once you're done. The hallmark of a 'good' book.