Review: A Little Life
By Erin Deborah Waks
Warning: spoiler alert
It is often that a book makes me cry. It is often that a book makes me fall in love with its characters. It is often that a really great book makes me see things differently.
It is not often that a book makes me sob just by turning the page, just by phrasing an emotion so perfectly that it has me in floods of tears seconds after laughing out loud.
It is not often that a book makes me adore its characters so much that their death is almost as devastating as if I knew them in real life.
It is not often that even a really great book makes me want to read standing up on a train platform for an hour because I couldn’t bring myself to put it down - or get on the train. To toss it across the room, heartbroken by its ending even though I saw it coming.
That is this book.
A Little Life broke my heart so many times over, I felt a rage as palpable as the sadness it elicited. I’d place Hanya Yanagihara’s novel right at the top of my list of favourite books - above my childhood favourite, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, my adolescent favourite, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and my early 20s favourite, Three Women by Lisa Toddeo. Not for the faint of heart - or even the fairly stable, such as myself - this book will rip your heart out with a single line and have you smiling the next.
For many reasons. Undeniably, the layered characters weaved into the plot are simultaneously relatable and complex, so that even when you can’t identify with them at all, you still adore them.
The novel’s twists and turns appear as though merely part of the elegaic prose yet never fail to be earth-shattering. However, the love that emanates from the pages is the only way you can keep reading. Were it not for Harold and Julia choosing Jude, Willem’s unconditional love of him, the plethora of other truly good people in his life, you would almost be unable to read the novel that somehow manages to stir up emotions you didn’t know you had.
And then there is the central relationship in the novel, perfect and imperfect in every way. It’s not predictable, far from it. But that Jude and Willem can find a soul mate in one another filled me with a sense of hope, that the universe was listening. Reading about Jude’s traumatic past made me bleed for him, and pray for him, and feel for him. But reading about his relationship with Willem made me rejoice. When their lives come to an end in the most unfair, unforgivable ways, I’m not ashamed to share that the text I sent to my best friend read: “I won’t allow it,” while a second said: “Absolutely hysterically sobbing.”
So read it, but read it with care. Put it down, hide it in the freezer, do whatever you need to do. Above all, hold someone you love afterwards.
