This Book Absolutely Completely Shattered Me When I Read It - Tumblr Posts

a little life

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So far my only five star read this year. This book absolutely shattered me in the way I crave from literature, though seldom get the pleasure of experiencing. I think I read the latter half (roughly the last 400/500 pages) in one evening because I refused to stop. In hindsight, it would've been more impactful to spread it out.

I could go on hours about this book for a variety of reasons, though the primary one definitely being the closeness I share with Judge. It's something that was quite confrontational while reading, though it's also helped me see how I've developed as a person in ways you yourself don't notice as the days pass by.

I feel like, to summarize what could become a dissertation, that in essence the book succeeded at being a fairy tale in the way Hanya Yanagihara describes herself but also in a bit of a more abstract way. I found a little life to be a perfect mix of life as we imagine it, would like to imagine it, and life as we live it. There's this mix of fantastical and idealized aspects (all of them have succesful careers, life lasting friendships, parental figures adopting a main character etc.) but there's also a lot of realistic aspects (poverty, constant dissatisfaction without knowing why, jealousy, trauma etc.) and it makes for a compelling beautiful albeit painful story.

I already want to re-read it.

Send me a book and I'll rate it