Recently, I finished the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. If I had to use one word to describe the book, I would say that it was honest; maybe too honest. A Little Life details the life of Jude St. Francis, an enigmatic character tainted by trauma. A Little Life left no room for the reader to make a metaphor out of Jude’s experience, making the reader take what came to Jude as if they’re reminiscing right next to him. About a year before I read A Little Life, I read the novel Lullabies For Little Criminals by Heather O’ Neil. This book tells the story of a young girl named “Baby” and her life in the streets of Montreal with a drug-addicted father named “Jules” and a pimp named “Alfonso.”

The two books felt eerily similar in their contents in that they both feature a fragile protagonist enduring sexual abuse, manipulation, and immense trauma. However, the main difference between the two is that Jude has his past told in layers as the reader watches his future unfold. Meanwhile, Baby has her experience depicted in real-time.  

The past, as we look back on it, leaves no room for melodrama as it is sober and untouched by romanticizations. When Yanagihara writes how Jude looks back on his past, she describes the guilt and shame he felt in a way that is so akin to the human experience. The idea of shame is relative to everyone; to Jude, it is the trauma for which he blames himself, but it doesn’t take immense trauma to understand his embarrassment. The act of looking back on the past is tinged with a feeling of shame. Shame regarding an embarrassing incident or shame regarding a painful experience we might have gone through. So when we look back on our past, we view the experience for what it was, whether that be horrendous or not as bad as we thought. 

The present, however, is malleable and is constantly under a multitude of influences. For most, anxiety and preoccupied opinions influence our present. For Baby, innocence does. Innocence is a concept that is sometimes difficult to identify in Baby’s story since her environment can be so dismal to the average viewer. While the reader is aware of the abuse that Baby endures, O’Neils writing presents the situation in an affectionate and dreamlike state, paralleling the dissociative nature of Baby’s thoughts. Reading Lullabies for Little Criminals feels slightly unnatural since innocence is often a privilege that victims of sexual abuse can not afford. But that represents the beauty of the present, it is so affected by how we write it, think it, feel it, that every interpretation of it is different. 

~Nirvika Dhanasri