Short-listed for the Booker Prize, this heart wrenching novel focuses on the problem of evil.
I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.
I usually try and buy as many of the six short-listed Booker Prize novels as I can. I managed three this year, but none of those won the prize. I delayed reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel because of its length, but a friend had started it, and urged me to get to it as soon as possible. Let me start off here with a warning. A Little Life is one of the most chilling, horrific, spell-binding, and wonderfully written novels I only rarely come across. This story explores the problem of evil and, more specifically, the depths of depravity some “humans” are capable of perpetrating. It also portrays all the good humans are capable of. Warning! This novel has extended discussions of evil, and several places that give explicit details. Most of the horrors are only alluded to, but they leave no doubt, in the reader’s mind, what happened.
Hawaiian author, Hanya, was one of the first two Americans shortlisted for the Booker last year. She was born in Los Angeles in 1975 and attended Smith College.
The story starts off benignly enough with a group of four long-time friends. JB was a struggling artist; Malcolm wanted to be an architect; and Willam, an actor; and finally, Jude, who studies law under his mentor, Harold. After establishing some background on the four, the focus shifts to Jude. While the four are usually open and forthright about their lives, Jude revealed next to nothing about his family, childhood, or his teen years. Gradually, the unnamed narrator – revealed in the final pages – begins a trickle of information about Jude’s abandonment as an infant on the door of a monastery. He was an unattractive child, and suffered bullying from his classmates. The monks considered him a distraction and a burden, but one monk, Andrew, befriended him. They run away, ostensibly to escape the bullying, but the story takes a horrific turn as 12-year-old Jude is destroyed by a string of evil men. After two years of traveling around the country from one motel to another, the police break down the door, and find Jude alone and terrified. They find Andrew dead in the bathroom. Jude is taken to a foster home, where the abuse continues. Finally, he gets to college and meets Willam, the first kind person he has ever befriended, and his life appears about to turn around.
I know this sounds awful, but the prose is so mesmerizing, I could not stop reading despite the terrible things Jude experienced and lived with his entire life. Despite the horrors, I think the novel has a lot to say about the problem of evil. On more than a dozen pages I cried, as Jude struggled to explain himself, to open up to his friends, and Harold. Unfortunately, Jude was so damaged, he blamed himself for everything, and he felt he deserved all his experiences. Even Harold, who gave Jude the loving family he never had, adopted him as an adult. But, Jude always that imagined there was a string attached to their kindnesses.
Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is a tough read, but we should stare down evil in the face and make this world a better place with kindnesses of our own. 5 stars
Likely Stories is a production of KWBU. I’m Jim McKeown. Check out my new book blog at RabbitReaderBlog.com. Join me again next time for Likely Stories, and happy reading!
