Book Review: A Little Life (spoiler free!)
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara, is one of the most tragic books I've ever read. So much happened, that it's hard to fit it all into the few short paragraphs I'll probably write.
This was a 700-something page book. Unnescesarryly long. But every page still felt like it mattered, every page I would have to brace myself for what would come next.
it's honestly strange how much I enjoyed reading this book. The writing style was awesome. It was simple, but so descriptive at the same time? It's kiiind of Sally Rooney esque if you squint your eyes and blink a few times? It's Rooney-esque in that most of the sentences are pretty unenthusiastically written, but, again, in the best way possible. this is coming from a person who hated Sally Rooney's book because of the writing style but Yanagihara really hit the spot. I never wanted to put this book down, despite how long it was.
I've seen a lot of people call this book torture prn, to which I, yeah, pretty much agree. For a lot of this book, no one really has a good time. I hated a lot of the charcters, but loved their stories enough that I stuck around. I wish they talked more about JB though, because his subplot was so lively, where things really happened, as opposed to some other parts of the novel; it was just interesting to read.
I'm on the younger side, (as you can probably tell by my writing... English teachers are rolling in their graves rn...), but honestly, this book wasn't really as 'mentally scarring' as the reviews said it would be. Not that that's a bad thing, maybe it's just me.
My final verdict is: this is such a beautiful, ugly, scarring book. If you're in the right mindset for it mentally, and you've looked over all the content warnings, try to give it a go.