The Kirkus
Prize for Fiction winner was announced today.
Hanya Yanagihara received the $50,000 award for A Little Life. (I posted
brief plot summaries of the other five finalists on October 3.)
I have read
the winner and posted my review on August 10. In honour of the book’s win, I am reposting my review:
Review of
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
4.5 Stars
Every year
I seem to read one 700+-page novel. This
is the one for 2015. I just finished it
and feel as if I’ve been on an emotional roller-coaster ride for the last few
days. Whew! I won’t soon forget this one.
The book is
about the lives of four young men who became friends in university and moved to
New York to begin their careers. They
are Willem Ragnarsson, a waiter and wanna-be actor whose family ranched in
Wyoming; Malcolm Irvine, a biracial man from a wealthy family who is beginning
his career as an architect; J.B. Marion, the son of Haitian immigrants whose
goal is to become a renowned artist; and Jude St. Francis, a lawyer about whose
past virtually nothing is known. We see
how they maintain their friendships as they become established in their
professions. Gradually, though, the
focus turns to Willem and Jude’s friendship and the revelation of Jude’s
traumatic childhood.
Though the
book covers about 40 years, there is a timelessness to it. There are no references to specific years or
historical events, though it is clearly set in contemporary times. For example, 9/11 receives no mention. This sense of things happening in an eternal
present gives the book a fable-like quality.
This is not
an easy book to read. There are graphic
depictions of suffering.
Abandonment, physical and sexual
abuse, sexual exploitation, rape, prostitution, addiction, self-harm, domestic
violence, suicide, and grief are detailed, so readers need to be prepared for
an emotionally harrowing experience.
Most of these miseries are revealed in flashbacks to Jude’s early life,
“the snake- and centipede-squirming muck of Jude’s past.” The relentlessness of Jude’s traumas reminded
me of Sisyphus, though Jude has committed no great sin. The novel can be seen as an examination of
the effects of trauma. Jude emerges from
his upbringing physically and emotionally damaged: “those fifteen years whose half-life have
been so long and so resonant . . . have determined everything he has become and
done.” Chronic pain, shame, insecurity,
and self-hatred are just some of the effects.
Because of what happened to him, Jude can think of his life only in
terms of “its smallness, its worthlessness.”
On the
other hand, the book is also an examination of friendship. Willem thinks about friendship: “Why wasn’t friendship as good as a
relationship? Why wasn’t it even
better? It was two people who remained
together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or
children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the
mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip
of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of
getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal
around him in return.” Later, he tells
Jude, “’I know my life’s meaningful because . . . I’m a good friend. I love my friends, and I care about them, and
I think I make them happy.’”
Though
friendship has its value, certainly giving Jude some solace, the book also
suggests that it has its limitations.
The friendships Jude has cannot repair him. As in All
My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, a character concludes, “how hard it is to
keep alive someone who doesn’t want to stay alive.”
It is some
of these friends who are a weakness in the novel. For thematic development, it is necessary for
Jude to have friends. The difficulty is
that he has so many who remain unstintingly loyal and concerned regardless of
his behaviour. It would be expected that
some of those friends would fall away, tiring of his repeated actions, but that
is not the case. No one ever seems to
outgrow a friendship. Except for Willem,
Malcolm and J.B., however, those friends are not differentiated. Often, they are just listed: “Citizen, or Rhodes, or Eli, or Phaedra, or
the Henry Youngs” and “Andy, JB, Richard, Harold and Julia, Black Henry Young,
Rhodes, Citizen, Andy again, Richard again, Lucien, Asian Henry Young, Phaedra,
Elijah.” Willem, when trying to explain
to Jude who he is, says, “’You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of
Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt,
of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de
los Santos, of the Henry Youngs.’”
But the
characterization of Jude can only be called amazing. His inner turmoil is detailed so specifically
that there is a vividness to his character that will remain with the reader for
a long time. We may not approve of his
behaviour and we may want to shake him and yell at him, but we will certainly
understand his motivation.
This dark
and disturbing novel will leave the reader almost overwhelmed. It is a totally immersive read. Though it may seem implausible in parts, it
will nevertheless leave a lasting impression.
I’m in awe that all that was accomplished in only 700+ pages.
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