A Little Life
book review
Exploring the idea of friendship as allyship in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life…
I was warned by several people *not* to read this book.
But — much like the time, age 6, I slammed an emergency button and sent a whole leisure centre screaming for the exit — if you tell me not to do something, I will absolutely be doing it.
And I’m glad I did.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is one of the most absorbing, intricate, serrating, deeply bruising novels I’ve read. Turning those final pages was like being hit by a double decker bus. For a writer to be able to conjure that intensity of emotion through lining up words on a page, will never fail to amaze me — it’s a masterpiece.
I realise so much has been said already on the book, particularly about Yanagihara’s psychological realism, her depictions of sexual abuse and trauma, the way she is able to pull us into a scene (even when we’d prefer to look away, and run for the hills)…
But one avenue in the book that remains underexplored is the subject of disability – the question of how Jude’s disability shapes his life and relationships. Because, if you look closely enough, A Little Life breaks new ground, offering us fresh insights into the way we understand disability and human connection.
If you haven’t yet read the novel, here’s some brief context: A Little Life follows four college classmates as they move to New York, hungry for fame and fortune. While their relationships ebb and flow over the decades, the friends are anchored by their love for our protagonist, Jude St. Francis — a disabled, borderline-genius lawyer with an inconceivably traumatic past.
Through flashbacks, it transpires that Jude’s mobility difficulties — his limp and spinal damage — are a result of his abusive childhood (an incident where his abuser, a psychiatrist called Dr Traylor, runs him over). It’s also apparent that he experiences health complications from his ongoing self-harming.
But, amid the brutal, visceral images of Jude’s disobedient body, the true image of disability is not fearful or abhorrent. In fact, as something that engenders resilience and compassion, it binds the friends, bringing them closer together.
For a book that is so intent on showing the isolation of the human mind, one area where its characters can find solidarity and compassion is through disability.
What stood out to me, in particular, was the idea of friendship as allyship. Jude’s effervaceous friends – especially Willem, JB, and Malcolm – lift him in ways that are essential to his happiness, his future, and his sense of hope and belonging. As Jude sees it, ‘they were so fearless, so bold… they were his emissaries to a less inhibited, more joyful world. They had always known how to take pleasure from everything.’ Together, in their ramshackle apartment at 56 Lispenard Street, they build the foundations of a life that - in Jude’s eyes - he could not have dreamt of. ‘When he hadn’t known what to hope for, he hadn’t known that life could be better than Lispenard Street.’
It reminded me of a passage from my own book, See Me Rolling, highlighting the redemptive power of love, friendship and personal relationships: “People will often say, you only truly ‘get’ the issues facing disabled people when it affects someone you love. Being close to someone with a disability, humanising the barriers they face and taking on the frustrations as if they were your own, is kind of revolutionary. For love is not an individualistic act, it is a social force that can bring about real progress.’
5 moments from A Little Life that show friendship as allyship:
1. Through Jude’s friendships he begins, brick by brick, to break down the walls he has built around himself – realising that his need for closeness outweighs his discomfort around feeling physically exposed.
‘The two of them [Jude and Willem] stood there, wrapped around each other, for a long time. He remembered thinking that he wasn’t wearing enough layers to really let Willem hug him this closely, that Willem would be able to feel the scars on his back through his shirt, but in the moment it was more important to simply be near him’.
2. When Jude commissions his close friend Malcolm, an architect, to create a home for him, the apartment is thoughtfully adapted to meet his access needs. There is beauty, love and intimacy in this design process — an intuitive understanding about the importance of accessibility (and the need for a working elevator!)
“[Jude] won’t know it then, but years later, he will be grateful that Malcolm has prepared for his future, even when he hadn’t wanted to: he will notice that in his apartment, the passages are wider, that the bathroom and kitchen are oversize, so a wheelchair can make a full, clean revolution in them, that the doorways are generous, that wherever possible, the doors slide instead of swing, that there is no cabinetry under the master bathroom sink, that the highest-placed closet rods lower with the touch of a pneumatic button, that there is a bench-like seat in the bathtub, and, finally, that Malcolm won the fight about the grab bars around the toilet.”
3. In moments of self-consciousness, Jude’s friends and professional mentors remind him of his power as a litigator, which far surpasses any perceived limitations.
“[Jude] is in his wheelchair that day because his feet are throbbing, although he hates to have the clients see him so impaired. “Believe me, Jude,” Lucien had said when he had worried aloud about this to him years ago, “the clients think you’re the same ball-crushing asshole whether you’re sitting down or standing up, so for god’s sake, stay in your chair.””
“People are going to think certain things about you because of how you walk,” Mr. Irvine had once said to him, and he had looked down. “No,” he’d said. “Don’t look down, Jude. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re a brilliant man, and you’ll be brilliant, and you’ll be rewarded for your brilliance. But if you act like you don’t belong, if you act like you’re apologetic for your own self, then people will start to treat you that way, too.” He’d taken a deep breath. “Believe me.” Be as steely as you want to be, Mr. Irvine had said. Don’t try to get people to like you. Never try to make yourself more palatable in order to make your colleagues more comfortable.”
4. When Jude confesses his belief that he’s incapable of being in a romantic relationship, his friends convince him otherwise — dispelling the ableist myths around disability and intimacy he has sold himself.
“Then Willem asks, “Jude, do you ever want to be with someone?”... “I worry sometimes that you’ve decided to convince yourself that you’re somehow unattractive or unlovable, and that you’ve decided that certain experiences are off-limits for you. But they’re not, Jude: anyone would be lucky to be with you,” says Willem.
““Harold,” he says, and he hears how awful, how wretched, he sounds, “when you look like I do, you have to take what you can get.” They are quiet again, and then Harold says, “Stop the car.” … “Listen to me, Jude,” says Harold slowly, and reaches for him, but he pulls himself back against the window, away from Harold’s hands. “You are the most beautiful person I have ever met—ever.” “Harold,” he says, “stop, stop. Please stop.” “Look at me, Jude,” says Harold, but he can’t. “You are. It breaks my heart that you can’t see this.””
5. The way Jude’s friends are able to really see him, to the point where his disability is peripheral to who he is.
““Well, Judy,” he said, “you really ended up with it all in the end, didn’t you? The career, the money, the apartment, the man. How’d you get so lucky?” … [Jude] was flattered by JB’s jealousy: to JB, he wasn’t a cripple who was being cosmically repaid for a lousy run; he was JB’s equal, someone in whom JB saw only the things to envy and never the things to pity. And besides, JB was right: How did he get so lucky? How did he end up with everything he had? He was never to know; he was always to wonder.”
However, as I was writing this post, I found the opposite viewpoint: one reader felt the book was ‘ableist’ because it echoed the ‘systemic idea that a disabled character [Jude] literally can't live without his able-bodied counterparts.’ They believed Jude represented a ‘disgraceful caricature of a disabled person’, one who constantly elicits pity. While it is completely subjective and you can read a book in multiple ways, I don’t align with this interpretation for the following reasons. Firstly, I think Yanagihara presents Jude as the most talented, capable, respected, intelligent and tenacious character in her novel. It’s only because of Jude’s lack of self-worth, his internalised ableism, that he cannot access the reality of who he is, and who he has become. All the evidence – his professional prestige, the way he is admired by those around him – suggests he has an quietly powerful, stoic presence.
Also, the implication that Jude is overly dependent on his friends and cannot conceive a life without their support, lacks nuance. Jude gains emotional and practical support from his friends throughout the novel, but the pendulum swings both ways — his relationships are not parasitic or one-sided – there is a sense that they gain as much from Jude as he does from them.