“A Little Life”: My Thoughts About The Book

If someone you know has a hard time understanding the concept of “trauma,” give them this book; it will be a good start, I think.

“A Little Life” is not an exciting, action-packed novel. Some might say that it’s boring, repetitive, annoying, predictable. But that’s the beauty of it or at least the thing that I enjoyed most. It’s a large book, and it will take some time to finish it. But during this journey, I often caught myself thinking that maybe I should call it quits; there should be something more worthwhile my time, right? However, as you read, you come to realize that this is the centerpiece idea of the novel, just as its characters have to decide whether they should quit, or choose to pursue, to endure, and see where this leads them, hopefully to happier times.

This book will challenge you to make the difference between stubbornness and trauma.

Quotes

The axiom of the empty set is the axiom of zero. It states that there must be a concept of nothingness, that there must be the concept of zero: zero value, zero items. Math assumes there’s a concept of nothingness, but is it proven? No. But it must exist. “And if we are being philosophical — which we today are — we can say that life itself is the axiom of the empty set. It begins in zero and ends in zero. We know that both states exist, but we will not be conscious of either experience: they are states that are necessary parts of life, even as they cannot be experienced as life. We assume the concept of nothingness, but we cannot prove it. But it must exist.

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It was impossible to explain to the healthy the logic of the sick.