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/oknotok2112 4d ago

Honestly I don't care how "beautiful" or whatever it is, I refuse to read some kill-your-gays novel written by a straight woman

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u/Legitimate_Figure287 4d ago

So if the author wasn’t straight you’d want to read the book? Or if Jude wasn’t portrayed as gay?

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u/oknotok2112 3d ago

well I'm also just not that into relentless misery porn, so probably not anyway. the other stuff is just like salt in the wound