Every time I finish a renown classic, I fear that the next book will never match my expectations. It’s silly, I know. It’s also, I think, what the Italian school system has left me with thanks to its relentless praises for a supposedly glorious past. The old, they imply, is always better than the new. A lesson forever rooted in me.
Contemporary literature, however, is full of works that happily and shamelessly I place on my shelves next to Marcel Proust and Ingeborg Bachmann. Among these, I’d say Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life fits nicely if only because, to a certain extent, it seems to naturally complement and expand upon Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
This is not to say that Yanagihara is following Plath’s steps. It’s easy to tell their books apart, since there are all sorts of differences such as their writing style, the point of view from which the story is narrated, and Yanagihara’s rich assortment of characters versus Plath’s claustrophobic soliloquy.
Essential qualities notwithstanding, at the same time it’s impossible to keep the trajectory of Jude St. Francis’s story in A Little Life apart from Esther Greenwood’s in The Bell Jar. Plath is less direct and more enthralling, perhaps. For instance, we hardly know Esther as we turn the last page. Yanagihara, on the other hand, gives the reader plenty of time to know Jude. Everything happening in his own little life has an enormous impact on everyone who loves him, and we get to see how far the consequences of one’s choices and actions reach, in what way they defy control.
And yet both Esther and Jude don’t progress on a straight line. Both books create this gripping tension where we slowly give up expecting improvements in Jude’s and Esther’s condition. We cannot consider them safe from harm. Maybe Jude experiences more relief than Esther, especially when he finds love, but as we follow the non-linear unfolding of the events we get to understand how painful and traumatic Jude’s past has been, how it has shaped him and never ceases to do so.
In order not to forget that there is never just one life at stake, that we are who we are because there is always someone else who determines changes in our selves, Yanagihara intersects the story of Jude with those of his dearest friends, each of them unforgettable in their own way, each of them with a unique, privileged access to Jude. We learn to understand him better through their eyes, but their relationships with him lead us to a better understanding of his friends as well.
Through multiple angles, then, Yanagihara accompanies the readers in and out the lives of her characters. She also uses her inquisitive lenses to explore violence, abuse, rape, self-inflicted scars, pedophilia, and self-consciousness. The physical and psychological hell she puts us through can be demanding at times, but as ruthless as some of the cruelest episodes are, moments of uncompromising love and joy tie us close to these little lives. I’ve never met a person like JB and probably never will, but this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to. It doesn’t mean he’s any less real than me.
This is why it’s easy to relate to these characters, and I do enjoy this feeling of familiarity. I enjoy it so much, in fact, that spotting myself on the pages has become some sort of a game I like to play any time I’m reading. Usually, though, hints of my own personality are scattered among multiple characters, but it’s still fascinating to discover just how ordinary I am, how things I think only peculiar to me are actually out there for anyone to have. It’s something that projects me into a wider space beyond myself.
When Yanagihara allows her characters to experience the open, breathing web that holds them together, she is making them realise that they’re still part of a larger world. The more they look inward, the more they fail to see what is waiting for them. In other words, they’re never alone. Much like Esther Greenwood really wasn’t. Much like we never are.