What is the most touchy thing? What makes us feel empathy? My answer is a personal story that shows all transformations of the character and a lifeline from childhood until the end. That's why all adventure and picaresque novels like Oliver Twist, Dombey, and Son by Dickens, Mark Twain's stories keep our attention.
I didn't read anything good about this genre for years, but last year I met "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara and "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tart. Both of them got literature prizes in the States and both are American female writes which describe the growing up process of the boy. This gender shift I find very curious and always wanted to ask men if they also were thinking the same way as they were described in the book? Probably yes, if these novels were so much welcomed by critics.
The growing up novel is a new trend now, at least it looks like so for me. And if I were a writer I'd probably make up a story about it.
I wanted to talk about "A little Life". This book made me cry like no other. I stopped so many times but never could stop completely and wanted to go until the very end. It's a story of a sexual harassment, the childhood of the abandoned boy who tried fit to this world somehow. Intelligence was the only possible tool for him and he succeeded in many ways but there is always something that says: "You are not complete and cannot be ever". While I was reading this book I was asking myself, how is it possible to be successful in the career after all this shit and how it is possible to survive. I don't know.
This is not an easy reading, it's a long story with detailed narrations, but smatly composed and I must admit I have never been bored by reading it.
The one striking feature here is we don't know the time when it's all happening. It's probably future but not so far from us. Far future. With the same problems and the same questions.
We can hardly meet any proper female character in this book. That's why the novel was criticised by feminists. I would ask an author why she decided to show mostly 'man world'. Was it a decision or the plot of the story dictated the certain rules.
For me it was a great story about love, suffer, acceptance and exceptions. And I think it is one of the best books about gay and queerness.
Have you heard about this book?
Picture source: http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/queer-eye-antoni-porowski-a-little-life.html