Life Through Chapters - A Little Life

Act of Choosing Favorites

I always struggle when picking a favorite anything. I am indecisive in general and uninterested in most things. However, one of my favorite things is books. They offer the opportunity for escape and adventure. How do you choose a favorite adventure when each one offers something different, unique and incredible all on its own?

Book of Books

If forced to choose, however, I might say A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. When watching Queer Eye a few years back in the summer of 2018, I kept seeing Antoni Porowski wearing shirts that said “Jude & JB & Willem & Malcolm “. I needed to know who they were, so I googled them. I found this interview Porowski had done where he talked about the book. How he talked about it and the characters is what it first sparked my interest in reading it. Then, when the interviewer told him that he’d read the book in five days and couldn’t put it down, Porowski called him a ‘masochist’. That solidified my want for the book because I can be a bit of an emotional masochist when it comes to reading, so I bought it a few days later when I next got the chance to go to Barnes and Noble. Eventually, I also bought the hardback.

Life in Little Moments

Even though the story starts with little to nothing truly happening, I was immediately sucked into It, and I could not put it down. I carried the book everywhere. I even risked taking it to the pool when I would never usually risk bringing books around that much water. It was just such an entrancing book from the beginning. The writing was beautiful. Despite how much their lives hurt sometimes or most times, even their lives were beautiful in its own way. The story was tragic, and it hurt often, but it was so good. As you read, you finally understand the title. Because like I said, there’s no concrete plot, but then you realize, the story is just their lives and their friendship through the decades. Again, that’s not something I usually like or want to read, but there was just something about it this time.

Friends Through Decades

Most of the story focuses on Jude with Willem coming in second, JB third, and Malcom with the least amount of page time. They’ve been friends since college well into their old ages. We see each of them struggle with childhood issues and adult life issues and making a good life for themselves with something that’ll make them happy. We see how their friendship has developed and grown and struggled. We see them each begin to truly make a life for themselves despite all they’ve been through. There’s so much life and love and loss and hurt in these pages. And we get to experience right along with them, but especially Jude. 

Exaggeration

There are a lot of people who love the book, and a lot who think it’s essentially torture porn. To some extent, they aren’t wrong. Yanagihara herself said she wanted everything to be turned up just a little too high. She wanted there to be an exaggeration, but she also said she wanted it to be an exaggeration of everything. Not just the pain and hurt but also the love and friendship and empathy.

Still In It

A Little Life broke my heart and tore me apart. It made my chest hurt with how strongly my heart was breaking on so many pages, generally for Jude. It took me about a week to finish because probably about halfway through it, I just had to sit it down for three days to take a breather and let my heart mend a little bit. It means so much to me. I even have a tattoo based on it. An ‘X=X’ on my wrist; the Axiom of Equality, which is a section title in the book and something Jude manages to make into something extraordinarily sad.

This is a book I still think about to this day. It sits with me.