ok I HAVE to expand because I've known in my bones for years that this was, if not literally a fanfic with the serial number filed off, a book written with a very specific character in mind and i am SO SURE i've got it right...... like allow me to explain that believing it's an adapted fanfic isn't what makes me think A Little Life is bad I think it's bad for several reasons including:
jude st francis is the only realised character, the others are empty husks with names, one or two nominal traits, and a distinctive career
it has absolutely nothing to say about anything but i find it especially egregious on race, about which there is no meaningful dialogue. two of the 'main characters' are Black men and apart from one feeble attempt about 50 pages in, Yanagihara seems at an utter loss as to what to do with them and so abandons them without further ado extremely early on to focus on Jude who we're told isn't white, but functionally is because we're told it's not clear what his heritage is and anyway he passes as white, so really he's just a beautiful 'other' who evades the tawdry label of 'white boy protagonist' whilst functionally being a white boy protagonist. whatever race Jude appears to be or does not appear to be, it induces no dialogue whatsoever, so what exactly does any of this diversity mean on the page if Yanagihara writes it off just as soon as she introduces it
it's also called a 'great gay novel' whilst not really being about any LGBTQ+ issues or even gay characters. Jude is only interested in Willem, and Willem is canonically 'straight with an exception' for Jude. Yanagihara has nothing to say about gay relationships or gay men. literally nothing. she doesn't even want to describe her protagonists as gay, only JB who she quickly writes off as an obnoxious waste of space
there is no sense of time or society in this book. people might say that's a choice and it certainly is one but the effect is that the only subject upon which the book has anything to say is Jude St. Francis. despite covering decades of time, we have no notion of when this story is taking place or even really where besides the fuzziest impression of expensive apartments in New York. this story has nothing to say about society because society does not even appear in the book
Yanagihara also has no interest in meaningfully representing anything. she's not interested in the process of recovery: she herself claims that despite never going to therapy she fundamentally doesn't believe in it and thinks it's a con. she's not interested in abuse or its impact, despite the copious depictions of it in ALL. she writes apparently gay men with no interest in how that experience might look different from her own. and literally the only point she actually cares about making, by her OWN ADMISSION: is that when enough bad things happen to a person, they might as well kill themselves because therapy isn't going to save them. i think that is uh. obscene
and just like. if you want a story that actually has something to say about abuse and recovery I really can't recommend the Patrick Melrose books enough (sidenote my username isn't meant to be a tribute to them lmao but they are genuinely incredible). they're written by a survivor of horrific abuse with such visceral yet empathetic reflection, with a vivid dissection of the cycles of abuse and the most honest portrait of recovery i've ever read. and if you aren't too scarred from ur superwholock days to watch benedict cumberbatch in anything again, I really recommend the HBO adaptation, it's very sensitively and skilfully done and I can't believe more people haven't seen it
anyway you can tell a little life is a fanfic BECAUSE:
as I say that absence of society or any dialogue about any of the issues of race and sexuality that Yanagihara raises and then immediately discards. this is something you get away with in fic because fic isn't really about commentary on society, it's simply about pleasing yourself
Yanagihara is pleasing herself by writing whump fic. if you've not read A Little Life, you will honest to god not believe the number of things she puts her protagonist through. it'll seem insane when you're reading the wikipedia but i cannot express enough that that is only the TIP OF THE ICEBERG
Yanagihara forgets to tell us why we should care about Jude before she launches into whumping him. you can get away with this in fic because by definition your audience already cares. not so with ALL, but I think many readers mistake their own horrified reaction to the things that happen to Jude as compassion for Jude as a character
let's not even get into the other three of the 'main characters' like Willem has no personality to speak of besides being obsessed with Jude. JB is 'obnoxious'. and Malcolm.... well he's there!!! and this is giving fic too. it's giving 'all the characterisation being in Yanagihara's head so she forgets to actually put it on the page for the reader'
like truly honestly genuinely these guys aren't characters. even given how monstrously popular this book is, find me any article or tiktok or anything where a reader has anything to say about these characters as people. you won't because there is nothing to say. all they'll be talking about is how much it made them cry
LISTEN TO ME!!!!THIS BOOK EXISTS TO SATE THE DESIRE FOR WHUMP AND NOTHING ELSE!!!!! AND THAT IS OKAY FOR FIC!!!! BUT STOP CALLING IT A GREAT GAY NOVEL AND A MUSING ON ABUSE AND RECOVERY IT IS JUST!!! SIMPLY!!!! NOT!!!! THAT!!!!
ok so why do i think it's a marauders fic well this is the easy bit
four friends who essentially grew up together. and it's a wolfstar fic so we don't really need the james and peter counterparts we just need the remus and the sirius
Jude as Remus seems obvious in hindsight. he's this wilting selfless intellectual survivor of terrible events who as a result is chronically ill in a way that is horrifically described but with a strange voyeurism. im not saying jkr wrote him like that (jkr barely wrote him at all lmao) but that's very much what i can tell of many fanon versions of Lupin even having never been active in the fandom. and im not even criticising that like fanon is fanon but im saying that's clearly what has inspired Jude
but it's a dead giveaway if Willem, JB and Malcolm resemble Sirius, James and Peter respectively so instead they are nothing characters. nothing at all. we need Willem on the scene to fulfil the other half of wolfstar and be obsessed with Jude but his personality is stripped back so that the Sirius of it all can live in yanagihara's head and we readers get nothing. just some human window into Jude's horrible little life. hey that's the title
i've always found it strange that Yanagihara seemingly started this book with the intention of telling the story of all four main characters? but that that intention reeeeally quickly fizzles out?? i think that's bc as in many fics, a writer might set out wanting to write about a slightly larger cast but often end up zeroing in on their ship and the character they love most within it, bc that's what they really want to write and that's what their readers often want to read. no criticism of that, fic is fic, but i found it very odd to come across the foundation of this in a book and watch it fall away as the writer became distracted. anyway so i think obviously those four characters were based on the marauders. it doesn't matter how hard it may be to identify Willem/JB/Malcolm as having parallels with anything or anyone, Jude is the giveaway
i don't have to draw a conclusion that is my conclusion. damn i hate this book
