no book has made me cry like this - review of "a little life" by hanya yanagihara

T/W - mentions of suicide, abuse, death

On a short holiday with my uni friends, sitting outside of the pub we were staying, we decided to dedicate one of the sunny afternoons to reading. The four of us sat on a picnic table, with our drink bottles and books, and quickly glanced at what the others were reading. I can't remember the books my friends had chosen but I do remember them considering my choice at length, before one of them simply said; "I heard that book will emotionally destroy you," and so there. I had been warned, but I still found myself woefully unprepared.

First, I must note Yanagihara's extraordinary gift for prose, for capturing the pains and joys of life, for writing the most believably flawed and shockingly real characters I have ever found in a work of fiction. Yanagihara drew me in, despite the warnings, despite my own suspicion - somewhere in the first forty or so pages, I suspected that Jude was going to commit suicide - I could not look away, could scarcely put the book down - I devoured the last four hundred pages of the novel in one sitting, reading well into the night, only stopping very occasionally to compose myself from the tears that surged again and again and again. The sense of dread I felt as I approached the end was thick, like I was reading from inside a pot of honey - The Happy Years, where Jude and Willem were finally together, where Jude had told Willem the full story; which, as it was slowly revealed over the course of the novel, broke my heart, made me rage, and made me ache (the writing so sharp, so poignant, so close to but so distant from the way children think and talk that I was struck dumb), and he and Willem were working through it all together, bound by their love and friendship and the home they had together. This, in its breathtaking sincerity and reality - they experience setbacks, they fight, things are hard, but they are also good - was the most brutal section to read. Because I knew, glancing ahead, that I had still almost two hundred pages left. And I knew, deep in my pot of honey (a strange metaphor, for which I apologise), that something bad was coming. And so, once again, I had been warned, but I still found myself woefully unprepared.

Willem's death, in retrospect, should not have shocked or wounded me quite as thoroughly as it did. Harold's first person sections, which were always being spoken to Willem, should have provided me with the same clues I noticed about Jude, that this wonderful, complex man was going to die. Still, I gripped my throat, hoping it was going to be similar to Jude and Caleb and the staircase, or in the shower, and Willem would be okay; or perhaps not okay, but at least alive. No. This novel was too real, too cruel, and Willem was gone; along with Malcolm. And the final two sections of the novel, in which I was absolutely unable to stop reading, choking back sobs the whole time, I was forced - trapped by my inexplicable connection to Jude, to Harold, to JB and Julia and Andy and Richard and even the Henry Youngs, by my need to offer them, these fictional beings, the only thing I could; that I would stay with them now, that I would bear witness, that I would not leave - to watch Jude's final three years, his pain and grief, the way he struggled to stay and also to go. I understood, painfully, just how much he wished to be at rest, to be in that house with the bed where he could finally, finally rest, to be with Willem again, the love of his life, who he was convinced he could never deserve. But I knew he did. And as we return with him and Harold, one final time, to Lispenard Street, when it is finally there, in words, that Jude has killed himself, and that Harold has had to watch the others die too; Andy and Richard and Citizen and others, I felt my heart breaking again. But, I found, it was Harold's consideration of JB, that truly unravelled me - one, where there had once been four, growing old in a way his dearest friends never would, never being able to take their photos and paint them again, never able to upset or mock or love them again. A lone, untethered piece of the story, blowing in the wind, without the three other, wondrous, broken lives to help pin him down.

So there. In all seriousness, read this book. Please. It will destroy you, leave you as it did me, sobbing at 4:30am on the toilet, but you should read it. It touched me in a way no other book has and while I could never read it for a second time (really, it would be beyond masochistic to subject myself to it) I feel that I will be fundamentally changed for having read it, like a part of me had been broken and rebuilt into a new shape.