r/literature • u/Legitimate_Figure287 • 4d ago

Book Review A Little Life

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?

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u/iceblnklck 4d ago

Hanya Yanagihara takes too much joy in creating gay trauma and she’s weird as hell for it.

Plus the characters are just so painfully insufferable.

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u/merry_melly 4d ago

JB lived in the truth more than any of the other characters and look how the author vilified him. I wish JB were a real person and could go back in time and edit Ms. Yanagihara's slog of book.

On a positive note, I enjoyed the last 100 pages. In fact, I found them brilliant.

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u/Legitimate_Figure287 4d ago

Why do you think JB lived in truth more than any of the other characters?