[Ugh, this got long too. I guess I still had some ranting left to do.]
It is a beautifully written book, prose-wise, and I think that is what a lot of people are responding to. (And also the answer I get when I ask friends why they weren’t super frustrated by the book.)
And I also don’t want to say that only survivors of childhood sexual abuse can write about childhood sexual abuse. But my intuition that Yanagihara did very little research is borne out:
"It’s useful to know on opening Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel, A Little Life – currently, a month before the winner is announced, the 3/1 favourite to win the Man Booker Prize – just how much research she did into the experiences and psychological background of Jude St Francis, the book’s central character: ‘No,’ she told an interviewer, ‘I didn’t do any research; Jude came to me fully formed.’" https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/christian-lorentzen/sessions-with-a-poker
It’s not exactly that the characters seem thinly drawn, as it is a problem with the situation. It has the quality of a parable, especially since Yanagihara decided to make the four friends become fabulously wealthy. I think so that the thing keeping Jude out of therapy wouldn’t be money. (As an aside, Jude does towards the end of the book actually engage with therapy, but there is no indication that it is actual therapy for PTSD, which he is certainly wealthy and connected enough to track down. For large sections of the book, I found myself comparing it unfavorably to all the Winter Soldier fanfic where the protagonist actually gets some friggin treatment.)
There’s a way in which the book is about how nothing (friends, romantic love, familial love, money) can ever be enough to help Jude. And I think that I just fundamentally don’t believe that.
no subject
It is a beautifully written book, prose-wise, and I think that is what a lot of people are responding to. (And also the answer I get when I ask friends why they weren’t super frustrated by the book.)
And I also don’t want to say that only survivors of childhood sexual abuse can write about childhood sexual abuse. But my intuition that Yanagihara did very little research is borne out:
"It’s useful to know on opening Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel, A Little Life – currently, a month before the winner is announced, the 3/1 favourite to win the Man Booker Prize – just how much research she did into the experiences and psychological background of Jude St Francis, the book’s central character: ‘No,’ she told an interviewer, ‘I didn’t do any research; Jude came to me fully formed.’"
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/christian-lorentzen/sessions-with-a-poker
It’s not exactly that the characters seem thinly drawn, as it is a problem with the situation. It has the quality of a parable, especially since Yanagihara decided to make the four friends become fabulously wealthy. I think so that the thing keeping Jude out of therapy wouldn’t be money. (As an aside, Jude does towards the end of the book actually engage with therapy, but there is no indication that it is actual therapy for PTSD, which he is certainly wealthy and connected enough to track down. For large sections of the book, I found myself comparing it unfavorably to all the Winter Soldier fanfic where the protagonist actually gets some friggin treatment.)
There’s a way in which the book is about how nothing (friends, romantic love, familial love, money) can ever be enough to help Jude. And I think that I just fundamentally don’t believe that.