Can we talk about A Little Life? ( with spoilers)

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I've just finished it and am thinking about it constantly. Jude has taken up residence in my head.
Anyone else read it and would like to share some thoughts on it?
I ripped through it in about a week and loved it. Quite soon I was thinking that it's one of the best ever for me. I do see flaws now though but they're not detracting too much.
I have barely ever read such relentlessly harrowing fiction. At times I had to stop reading and am struck that at one point it becomes a relief to be reading about Harold's dying son Jacob. That is one if the things I loved about it: my own response at certain points surprised and shocked me.

I listened as an audio book and LOVED it. It stayed with me for a long time too and I sobbed through the last half hour!

On reflection I find this review has pretty much nailed it for me:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/05/a-little-life-hanya-yanagihara-review

Ghastly overlong torture porn with a teenage girl’s fetishised attitude to gay men. I’m baffled by its popularity.

Oh I'm not reading the posts yet but marking as just started it this morning and would love to talk about it. Cant put it down so far.

It also fails as both a ‘fable’ and a realistic novel. It’s too realistic to be a fable but fails utterly to create a believable sense of time or place. How can you set a novel in New York in (presumably) the 80s to the 00s without any mention of the AIDS crisis, 9/11 or the financial crash?

For a much better take on a similar theme (group of young gay men and their friends negotiate work and relationships) try The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. It will make you cry though!

I didn’t love it. Too much misery.

Totally gripped when I read it, although some parts I practically read with my hand over my eyes, the words were so horrifying. Recommended it to everyone. Then I read it again and the scales fell somewhat... I found it to be a bit of a checklist of horrors and found it the level of brutality to be quite unnecessary.
Having said that, the first time reading it was a wow experience and that is a rarity.
(Only had it with The Secret History and to a lesser extent with Circe.)

RoscoePColtrane I suspect I might be like you if I reread it. Although I started this thread because I loved it, I see its flaws and may feel differently in time. I feel a bit less keen now than I did a few days ago because of reflecting on the comments on here.

bookworm14 I will try the one you mention.

I liked the timeless, suspended feel of it which The Goldfinch has too.
Not mentioning these big events or pinpointing specific time is part of the fable feel too.

I didn’t particularly like the book by the end I was thinking ffs what now. I did cry a few times and I did and still do have very vivid picturing of the characters and the settings. It was a relief to finish the book.

I didn’t enjoy The Goldfinch either I felt similar long drawn out and lots of waffling.

Both seem to be marmite books a friend is baffled that I like neither (when there are so many other books we both love)

@bookworm14 - yes that was another gripe, apart from the relentless misery porn, and the unlikeliness of someone so very abused and disadvantaged becoming so successful, there was no sense of the historical period it was set in. Ugh.

I hated it. I also thought it was an unrealistic misery memoir and didn't understand why others loved it so much, but my opinion seemed to be in the minority at the time

Hated it, sorry! Just the most miserable, extreme book and I found it an immense slog.. I kept with it just expecting there to be something good but no - just more misery and suffering. Awful book!

I thought it was a very well written book but i can't say i liked it. Around 3/4 of the way in i started feeling that the author was taking the piss a bit. I mean there was lots of misery, then more misery, and just when i thought it couldnt get any more miserable, it did. I finished it and i am sort of glad i read it but nothing would compel me to ever pick it up again.

I couldn’t finish it, it was too bad.

It’s crass misery porn. This.

It does seem to divide people. It was chosen for my book group by someone who loved it tenderly, lit up when she talked about it, felt it reflected her own experiences, re-read it regularly etc and I didn't want to hurt her feelings so it was hard to express how I felt about it. Someone else loathed it so much she made her excuses and didn't go to book group.

I felt the way the book was written was like torture porn disguised as care and love. I felt manipulated by it, stopped halfway through and deleted it from my Kindle.

It stayed with me, enjoyed is not a word I would enjoy but it I did think it was well written. One bit that plays on my mind is when the doctor discovers how many men he has been with and Jude thinks he turns away in disgust from him - but in reality of course the doctor is horrified by the obvious abuse.

@pawpawpawpaw I know what you mean by not wanting to hurt peoples feelings by telling them that you didn’t like it. With other books I can be more honest but for some reason not so much with this.
@Deadringer haha yes to the author taking the piss! How much bad luck was she able to give one character? It just felt overdone.

Lampan she just earnestly loved it so much. This is why we don't choose our favourite books for bg people!

Oh I was FULLY into this book, couldn't stop thinking about it and spent every spare moment reading it. I spent the chapter where the abusive boyfriend chucks jude down the stairs with my hand over my mouth gasping!

HOWEVER the start was slow, and I started skim reading towards the end. Also one of the group of 4 wasn't really fleshed out and I felt like he'd kind of been forgotten about. Jude's story was so tragic, I'm not sure about misery porn, it didn't feel like that while I was reading it but in hindsight it was a bit much. I did keep thinking that guy who adopted him was going to turn out to be awful and was so relieved he didn't!

And all the bits about the wounds got a bit repetitive.

I've just read a really good Hadley Freeman interview with Tony Slattery. (Good in the sense that he seems to be moving towards some form of healing, not good that this awful thing happened to anyone obviously.)

But the interview reminded me of this discussion about Jude. Some of the things Slattery says could have come straight from Jude/Yanagihara, which makes me think that the character and his feelings are not absolutely implausible.

On the one hand, i loved Jude, but on the other, he irritated the hell out of me. He was so desperate not to be a burden on anyone that he burdened EVERYONE with worry about him. I suppose apart from all the misery, at heart i needed to believe that Jude could be saved.

For those who loved A Little Life, The Goldfinch and Secret History I really recommend The Heart's Invisible Furies - it really stayed with me in the same way and is beautifully written.

I really liked the hearts invisible furies, although i think the second half dragged a little bit. The goldfinch and secret history are very well written books but again too dragged out for me, but i absolutely loved all the light we cannot see, what an amazing book! American dirt and the underground railroad are very good too. Has anyone read the nightingale?

I really didn’t like this book. It just seemed like an endless miserable slog without much point to it...so many people seem to love it though.

I found this huge, exceptional book relentlessly compelling and finished it in a few days. (And I'm quite a slow reader).

The characters stayed with me for a very long time. I adored it.

I read an article about the author who said that she'd wanted to write a story about someone who never got better, which I guess is an extremely rare premise.

My only criticism of the book is about the level of professional success all of the characters, even the periphery ones, achieve. This wasn't believable to me. It would have been refreshing to have had a character who worked as a shop assistant.