Maryann > Recent Status Updates

I am still so impressed with Yanagihara's ability to weave this immense tapestry, filled with such beautiful expressions of friendship, love, trauma, and humanity. I can certainly see why people would dislike this book. The pain is relentless. It is true I shy away from such gross brutality in reality, but to be honest I find myself drawn to fictional glimpses into suffering and see them as chances for reflection.

In my update just this morning I wrote that the slow discovery of Jude's past, parceled out so deliberately and slowly by Yanagihara, is "delightful and terrifying". Of course, "delightful" is not the right word. But there is an intensity to it, knowing that there is something terrible lurking up ahead and not knowing how near nor how bad it is exactly. Seeing how bad it is already, this isn't going to be pretty...

I have only scratched the surface of A Little Life, but I am already struck by how beautifully it is written. Yanagihara has drawn Malcolm, Willem, JB, and Jude so tenderly, and teases out their innermost thoughts and flaws with such finesse. The way she is building Jude's tragic past up and outward so slowly and deliberately . . . I know she does not shy away from darkness, so it is both delightful and terrifying.

I was on board for the most part until the paragraph that said that telling someone that their complexion kind of looks like someone you know who had cancer would actually give that person cancer within a year simply through the power of suggestion : /