The novel "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara

I felt the same way, OP.

You sound very literary OP. Also, it was never supposed to be a masterpiece.

It doesn't get better.

Was it "rat's pussy" R2?? I am LITERARY as ALL GET OUT, baby!!!!

The novel is so DANK. It's like reading the color GRAY.

I literally turn each page with a SIGH.

I have never felt this way about a book. It is perhaps too close to actual REAL LIFE.

I am getting serious "The Goldfinch" vibes..

However, this novel has been an atrocity since page 1. The Goldfinch FOOLED my ass- and I was turning each page feverishly because I just KNEW this was going to be an amazing novel. And it ended up being pure SHIT.

A Little Life has been SHIT since the first page, with no promise of anything good.

Terrible, awful waste of time. A book about gay men written by someone who seems to never have met a gay man in their life.

I actually just learned that the author is a woman. I truly thought that it was a gay asian male who lived in NYC.

And now I feel that I have to throw this book in the trash.

Don't throw it away, OP. Use it as a doorstop.

R7, I have the paperback and it is thick enough to use as a doorstop.

It has the cover with that guy crying "Ah poor me!!!!"

It's so dramatic.

I am assuming it is the Jude dude? (Fuck is that his name, the one who appears to have been abused or something and was raised in Iowa or Minnesota or some shit??)

Maybe I will burn it in the fireplace... I actually was hoping that someone would say IT IS SO WORTH THE JOURNEY!!!

I loved A Little Life and I loved The Goldfinch.

R9. I would love it if you have your brain donated to science.

I guess I am throwing this bitch of a book into the lake!

You can also wield it as a weapon, OP. Or a foot stool. It could hold up the broken leg of your couch. So many better uses than for reading. YOu could even send it back to Hanya as confetti.

Don't keep it. Toss it. Burn it. Whatever it. But don't keep it. You might feel compelled to pass it on. And no one deserves to have it hoisted on them.

I fucking hated it and I hate anyone who liked it!

R13. Let me never come face to face with YOU in an ALLEY!!!!!!

I hated that book because I was happy that Jude was abused. He was an insipid weasal of a character like Blanche Hudson and it made me glad that he was mistreated.

Torture porn by a straight woman. And some of the most awful sentences since the days of Jacquline Susann. It really is just a variation of "Valley of the Dolls" mashed with "Where the Boys Are" (with some "Noah's Ark," to punch the diversity card).

Christ!!!

I am vacillating between turning this paperback into a molten statue or reading it cover to cover with unbridled abandon!!!

I tried, but couldn’t get through it. Very very VERY bad.

Valley of the Dolls is a camp classic, and doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as this torture porn crap.

It’s fine to abandon a book you are not enjoying, life is to short. Why not consider On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which is written by an Asian American man who is a poet and writes beautifully.

Okay all. I tried. I finally gave up at Page 200. I feel nothing for any of these characters or the story,

So I decided to google the entire plot synopsis.

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!????

It sounds like a depressing HORROR SHOW.

Absolutely relentless misery and horror.

It reads like all of this shit happens (horrible revelations and one soap opera plot after another) yet the first 200 pages are so bad that I don't know how anyone could ever make it to all that.

And is this "Jude" possibly the most tragic character ever? That motherfucker makes some of these 30+ year soap opera characters sound like nothing ever happened to them.

What misery. And I have to say that I hated The Goldfinch. THIS book makes The Goldfinch look like Tolstoy.

Into the trash.

Count the number of times the phrase "Are you okay?" appears in the book. (No, now that you ask, sadistic author, I am not okay and I am off to my "Life After 'A Little Life'" support group.) That repetitive query is pretty much my lasting memory of this forgettable novel, that and the thought of Eddie Redmayne portraying the Jude character in the inevitable film adaptation.

I wasn’t even tempted to read it after umpteen DLers called it “torture porn.” Thanks for the tip, bitches!

OP, please recycle the book responsibly.

I've tried to listen to the audiobook on two separate occasions and haven't made it any further than the first seven hours, which is somewhere around Chapter 2 of Part 2. The fuck if I'm going to listen to another 25 hours of this shit.

They made you read that for your GED??

[quote]Torture porn by a straight woman.

Yanagihara is a lesbian.

Lots of m/m porn is written by lesbians in much the same way that a lot of girl-on-girl porn is directed by straight men.

A Little Life is torture porn, no matter who wrote it.

Women have absolutely no concept of male sexuality and this author is no exception. It’s actually maddening how dumb she is when it comes to all of that. Later in the book, Willem falls in love with Jude and the whole affair is rendered so pathetically and with no insight or logic, it was actually infuriating. It truly does become slash fiction ....an insipid fever dream idea of a gay male relationship but dreamt up in a crappy MFA program.

When the book was first published, it quickly became the goto read for posers desperate to prove how rigorous their literary tastes were. And don’t get me started about the fucking tote bags that these idiots ran around with, sashaying down the street like it conferred some awesome specialness to their existence. At one point, they seemed to be everywhere.

Gah. Fucking dolts.

[quote]Count the number of times the phrase "Are you okay?" appears in the book.

Better yet count the number of times Jude says some variation of "I'm sorry".

R28- YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

I seriously do not understand how the tone can change from the turgid, gray, morose, boring shit I have read to the endless tragedies that I read about on Wikipedia.

This book could easily drive someone to suicide.

I now have decided to keep this piece of shit and skim the pages to see how this mess happens.

Spoiler.

The deaths, the tragedies, the sexual repression and rejection, not to mention Judes violent and abusive history which I guess was one horror after another...

And if there is anyone here who is not going to read the book, read the WIkipedia synopsis- It reads like a satanic soap opera. It floored me.

I'm sticking with the Olive Kitteridge revisit!!!

I read it because Jonathan Groff recommended it in a way by saying he was obsessed by the book, read it backstage during Hamilton, crying and then getting to stage almost in tears. Re the book I recall it left strong impression on me, had to leave it for a while at one point. I also skipped some unnecessarily long too technical parts.

Fucking HELL.

After the Wikipedia, I decided to finish the book.

WHAT A PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!

Truly, garbage.

I did have a MOMENT where I finally felt sympathy for Jude. Or lets call him, JOBE.

However, this book was pure ghoulish torture porn(yes, to posters above! TORTURE PORN!!) soap opera..

Even the way Willem (Spoiler, If it matters for this utter piece of trash) DIED was a 2 paragraph torture porn moment (and frankly, I thought he deserved more-I think that he was the reason I finished this trash)

The Six Feet Under finale ending where everyone died relatively young, was SUCH manipulative garbage for anyone who sat and read this piece of shit.

Yeah, Cunt, (I am talking to this trash bin level author) your book will be made into some shitty film.

The book REEKS of some shitty film probably in development.

I have never had such a reaction a book in my life. And I mean it, I no longer hate the exerable "Goldfinch" in comparison.

Oh. I liked Harold. How could you not?

So glad I finished it. It was the worst book I have ever read.

Oh, and (spoiler, spoiler spoiler!!!!) the psychotic doctor who ran Jude over with his car, will definitely be the most suspenseful and trashy part of this TRASH BIN , exploitive film.

People really had TOTES with the characters names in this film!!???

Still floored.

Why are you so obsessed with a novel you hate? And why would you finish it? You’re just seeking attention.

R34, I became obsessed because I thought I was crazy for not loving (or liking) what I heard for years was a masterpiece.

I almost "hate watched" this book..

I don't want attention, but I really was fascinated in a way by this piece of garbage.

I won't even respond any more to this thread. I am really just venting at this point...

I happily abandon books that don't hold me. Usually around 60-100 pages. You are a patient man OP. Sub in bed?

I said I wouldn't respond anymore!!

Sub adjacent, R36!!!??

Call me, maybe!? :)

R15. I tried to read it once and gave up. I tried again and ended up hate-reading it to the end. I found myself enjoying Jude’s pain as he was just so inert and let life happen to him. I was really disconcerted that I liked his pain and was happy when he died. Maybe that was the point of the book? To examine your reactions to pain and grief? Or I was just happy the book was finally over.

R38, Well said.

I kept wanting to believe that there was some deeper meaning to this garbage.

And the author herself said "she wanted a protagonist who wouldn't get better"....

Well that's all well and good, but the book was manipulative trash disguised as a masterpiece...

And it was so UNBELIEVABLE. (And I am someone who truly believes that there is a dark underbelly in the USA, but the Jude shit was pure melodrama. It was insane)

The guy on the cover isn’t crying, he’s cumming.

Oh fuck me with that COVER!!

Wikipedia (I think) said it was from some artists exposition from the 80's or 90's...

He's not cumming.

Inspired by OP, and unable to finish it when I tried, I just looked up the synopsis...HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!! I’m so glad I stopped when I did. Total torture porn, like someone else said. I seem to recall glowing reviews for this and I am baffled.

Publishers make mistakes... Cultural theorists often laud works that have to general readership appeal... We don't like the same things.

Could be host of other factors operating here OP.

I didn’t make it as far as you did OP.

Read it a while ago. Weird - because it is total sexual Pedo torture porn. Written by some Vogue editress. It got so many good reviews - but is basically a version of porn. It became laughable at some point because it was so over the top. But it was memorable. And given how uninteresting most new books have been - either “woke” literature or fantastical or African/Asian - the options are limited. A distracting read - if disturbing and ultimately overrated.

It reads like it was written by that DL troll who talks about the “brick shithouse” father/uncle in Idaho. Disturbed people.

We had a looooong thread about the novel a few years ago. It became clear the novel is very divisive. I personally only started listening to the audiobook today, before seeing this thread. I lasted for 15 minutes. I might go back to it at some point, though, but possibly not.

Reminds me a little bit of Precious - but totally made up rather than real so it’s less disturbing.

[quote]He's not cumming.

Yes, he is. The cover is a 1969 photo titled 'Orgasmic Man' by Peter Hujar, a gay photographer who regularly, and artfully, photographed men in various states of erection and jerking off. Robert Mapplethorpe wouldn't have had a career without Hujar. He was a trailblazer.

[quote]Written by some Vogue editress.

New York Times Style magazine editress.

I'm so glad for this thread. I hate this book, and it's been sitting unread past page 175 for months. It's even darker than Black Deutschlandthat I had to skip to the end.

Yes, OP. It’s a ridiculously overrated piece of shit written by a clit diddling abuse obsessed frau who doesn’t have the first fucking clue about gay men. Her publisher should have horsewhipped her after reading it and tossed it into a fire.

Pure unadulterated garbage. So horrible.

I thought it was just a prop for annoying cunts on Instagram.

Y'all should stick with this. (SPOILER; everybody ends up happy!)

Endorsed by DL Fave Antoni:

Endorsed by DL Fave Antoni:

R54, It is not the fact that EVERYONE DIES BEFORE THE AGE OF 65, but the fact the book is sheer PABLUM up until that point. PURE garbage. And then it devolves into some horror film/soap opera.

It is trash FROM THE GUTTER.