#as in imagine if you never SEE jude's horrific past but. it's pieced together by his friends scene to scene or episode to episode

[judeharoldvich]

the day an A Little Life film/tv series comes out is the day i become a menace to society

[writingonesdreams]

What I learned from“A Little Life”

This books felt traumatizing and life changing. It’s hard for me to describe what I’m feeling, because after the onslaught of suffering and feels I just feel numb after finishing.

The writing is unique. It’s filled with long sentences and descriptions of places in incredible detail and vivid metaphors. Marvelous how much you can explain a feeling through metaphors. It felt more engaging and understandable and horrific to imagine the metaphors as feelings instead of figuring out what the bodily sensations were supposed to mean.

The long sentences help with the feel like you are inside the character’s thoughts. As they come, long, illogical, associative. It felt incredibly immersive and it makes the book powerful for it. It’s almost impossible to put down, once you get charmed, and I kept coming back to it, despite knowing it would only get painful and frustrating as it went.

The honesty of those thoughts. I believed this was a deep true insight into someone’s head, because the thoughts were at times very difficult, dark, selfish, unfair, honest. Or about people being honest about not being honest and how they felt and achieved their hidden honesty. Mindboggling.

The structure and choice of pov really hightlights how much can be done through literary means to tell the story you want to tell. How much you can use storytelling devices to strenghten and express what you want. The structure was so untypical, so misleading on purpose, it was excellent and changes how I see structure in books. Beginning, middle, end, what characters you introduce, what you zoom in, what you promise and who you actually deliver being played with, subversed, turned on its head. Totally different than the schemas most writing advice teaches. It really is for beginners I guess. Masters know how to break it to their advantage.

Setting. Pov. Voice. Tense. Form. Prose. Flashbacks. Chronology. Everything was so different, breaking rules, jumping around, being unpredictable but then coming together for a united whole.

I have been attracted to this book for its promise of close male friendships and pain that would get comfort. The book delivers and exceeds any limit, throws itself into tragedy and meaninglessness agony and living with it, but the author had very clear messages and themes in mind. She knew what she wanted to say. I realize now my frustration comes with disagreeing with lots of it. But that’s what books, are right? Not here to tell the one and only universal truth, but to explain and argue a point of view. An opinion. An option for living and seeing life. I understand and felt the argument and I still choose to disagree and that’s all right and good.

But it was incredibly insightful. There are wisdoms about human life, one so deep it gave me a puzzle piece I longed for for a very long time.

This book changed how I view pain. Not just a plot device, not just a moment in character life or point in their arc, but as state. Pain can be a state of being, physical, mental and emotional, social and personal, past and present. Pain doesn’t have to be just a singular occaurnce, something to get rid of, it can be chronic, long lasting, spiralling, a way and part of life.

The statement I guess that’s about radical and a bit hard to live with and I’m not sure what to think about. That some things will stay broken. That a person you love can be sick and never get better. And you can give them all the love and care and effort you have and more and it might not be enough and if doesn’t have anything to do with you. Some things just can’t be fixed.

The bonds of friendship. I liked how it got celebrated and centered on, even if I felt a bit betrayed they made Willem and Jude have a romantic relationship in the end after all. But it was an interesting study of the difference and transformation from friendship to romance. What changes, when you have already been close and known each other for decades? What changes from one kind of love to another? Expectations from the outside? That people can’t justify the time and effort you spend on friendships and need labels like romantic partners and family?

It was beautiful though, how the characters made thier own rules. How the four core friends never had kids and most didn’t marry, being sustained emotionally by their friendships. That friendship can be that close and nutricious and life-defining.

The theme of how no person can give you everything. How hard, embarrassing and stressful it can be to get close to someone, so who is worth such an effort? Being with others is in some ways do much harder than being alone. Why do we do it? What do we look for in others that we can’t find in ourselves? What do we give them? How do we find people who appreciate the best of what we give, give what we need back and we all value the same things enough to stay together and look for the mixing pieces somewhere else?

What I didn’t like about the opinions of this book was that comfort and deep affection only came with great pain. As if only horrendous suffering justified men in crying, needing touch and comfort and allowing themselves to get any. 

Other thing I was confused about was what Jude and Willem changed about their relationship, when it went from friendly to romantic. In a way the narrative defined deficencies of friendship, while preaching about its uniqueness and importance. So men are not allowed to touch and be that comfortable and physically intimate with each other, not allowed to randomly hug or sleep beside each other or snuggle, when it’s not with their romantic partner? I thought the shift would be mainly sexual, and that aspect gets thematized (and is hard and troublesome for Jude’s trauma about it and his unwilligness to disclose his suffering about it to Willem to not lose him to percieved societal obligations). I don’t know what exactly it is that I’m looking for, but I found it lacking in this story, despite its focus on friendship. 

I don’t get where the characters got so much time from. They managed to work overtime, cook too much, play instruments, meet friends, have fancy dinners and meetings, visit threathers and art, travel, have introspective debates about life, watch movies, drive long and slow, swim in the morning for two hours, regulalry visit doctors, work through the weekend, buy several apartments, reconstruct them and then build a whole new house…like what? That’s not humanly possible to achieve. I’m either that bad at time management, or the characters had way too much energy or the author didn’t really check how much hours a day has. 

All in all, this was a powerful book and I can see why it’s called a modern day classic, why it won awards, why it is so popular. I don’t regret reading. I don’t think I would do it again though. I want to read more famous and awarded books, want to observe masters at the craft of writing, but I don’t want it to be tragic and hopeless like these. Why do so many classics end tragically? Is there nothing deep about life than suffering and bathing in its pointlessness?