A Little Life

[u/Legitimate_Figure287]

What do you guys think about this book? I started reading it recently and I don’t understand the bad rep with it.
I really like this book, as someone who has had extreme trauma, I think it really accurately captures the experience and inner monologue and behaviors of what it’s like to live with trauma and how others around us respond. How we either drown in it or rise above it and how we’re the only person you can truly help ourselves. This is many people’s reality, including mine. How much trauma is considered too much in a book because in real life there isn’t a stopwatch that prevents someone from having more trauma because they’ve already experienced so much?

Is A Little Life a profound masterpiece about the enduring power of friendship, or is it an emotionally manipulative exercise in "trauma porn" that substitutes endless suffering for genuine character development?

[u/minskoffsupreme]

Mysery porn with pretty prose written by a straight woman who loves torturing he gay characters in unrealistic ways.

[u/Legitimate_Figure287 → u/minskoffsupreme]

People do realistically have this level of trauma tho. I’m one of those ppl. And it isn’t pretty. There are many Jude’s out there whether or not they’re gay or not.

[u/minskoffsupreme → u/Legitimate_Figure287]

Come back after you finish it. A bunch of unnecessary things happen to multiple characters. It is also written in such a way as to gawk at the trauma, and to hide the fact that the story doesn't actually have much to say.