A manipulative masterpiece
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Gothic fiction
19 min read
The article explicitly describes A Little Life as 'Gothic' and discusses its baroque, sentimental qualities. Understanding the literary tradition of Gothic fiction—its origins in 18th century literature, conventions of psychological terror, physical decay, and extreme emotion—illuminates why the novel's dark content connects to a respected literary lineage rather than mere shock value.
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Self-harm
13 min read
Jude's cutting is a central element of the novel, described as his method of alleviating physical and psychological pain. Understanding the psychology of self-harm—its causes, functions as a coping mechanism, and relationship to trauma—helps readers engage more thoughtfully with this aspect of the character rather than viewing it as mere sensationalism.
A Little Life is one of literature’s greatest traps.
For the first hundred pages, this novel cozily describes a group of four college friends and their petty tribulations as they attempt to become successful members of New York’s creative class. But as the book progresses, it devolves into a Gothic saga of mental and physical abuse, self-harm, rape, and torture.
As we eventually learn, one of these four friends, Jude, is an orphan who as a child was beaten and sexually exploited by several groups of men, the last of whom hit him with a car and gave him severe spinal injuries that leave him in constant pain, which he can only alleviate by cutting himself.
But there’s another side to Jude. He is also a genius. He goes to college at sixteen. He gets a graduate degree in mathematics, and he is a brilliant litigator and a decent singer and baker. Jude is deeply insecure, childishly attached to his friends, and terrified of being rejected by them, even though they all adore him.
Over the course of this seven-hundred page novel, Jude’s story spirals out of control, becoming a bigger and bigger part of the novel. The central relationship is between Jude and his friend Willem. This guy, Willem, becomes a famous actor! He’s in all kinds of movies, has his face on billboards, becomes a bankable star. But he remains quite attached to Jude and eventually they start a romance and come out as gay partners, at considerable risk to Willem’s career.
A surprise hit
The story I’m describing seems like it’s probably bad, no? If presented with the description above, surely nobody would be willing to slog through this novel.
Two things about this book are astonishing. The first is that when it was released in 2015, the book became a hit! I don’t think it got a lot of publicity from its publisher, Doubleday, but word of its merits must’ve spread pretty quickly, because that year it got shortlisted for the Booker and the National Book Award. However, this book’s success went way beyond award nominations. People talked about it. I only read this book because my coolest writer friend sent me a text saying I had to read it. And then I convinced my friend Courtney to read it, and we still talk about the book to this day.
A Little Life came out only
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