Book Pairings: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

 

This may seem like an odd pair of books to discuss together. They share little in common: different genres, different writing styles, different approaches to thematic content. I admit that I might not have thought to compare the two if I hadn't read them back to back. But honestly, I think a discussion of them both, together, will be worthwhile. First, here are the official blurbs for each book:

From A Little Life:

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever. 

 From Moxie:

MOXIE GIRLS FIGHT BACK!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with an administration at her high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes, hallway harassment, and gross comments from guys during class. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv's mom was a tough-as-nails, punk rock Riot Grrrl in the '90s, and now Viv takes a page from her mother's past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She's just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. As Viv forges friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

Moxie is a book about high school life that will make you wanna riot! 

So yes. There are a lot of big differences. A Little Life is sweeping, and grand, uncomfortable to read and even triggering to some readers. It follows four friends through decades, as the blurb reads, and these characters are so complicated and nuanced that they feel real. They do. By the end of the novel, you feel as if you've lived your life with these people, gone through both the beauty and despair of life. A Little Life poises a lot of difficult questions about survival, PTSD, courage, cruelty, and love.

What I also really appreciate about A Little Life is how not uniform the shape of its storytelling is. It starts out with four points of view, adds a fifth, but over the chapters pares down to three, with the third only popping up intermittently. It felt ... well, like real life, going through the evolution and deterioration of relationships, people dropping in and out of the narrative organically. 

Moxie is a YA novel about a single year in high school. It's fiery and largely fueled by nostalgia of the Riot Grrrl era of the 90's, which I loved. Viv is a "good girl" whom no one expects to start a revolution in her school. The writing here is dissimilar from A Little Life, and I must admit that Viv isn't as realized a character as the core cast of A Little Life. 

However. I think there's something quite profound (and fascinating) missing from A Little Life, and Moxie provides that in a satisfying whomp.

And that something? Female voices.

Don't get me wrong, there are women in A Little Life. The characters live in major American cities. They work with women, sometimes sleep with women, are friendly with women. One of them even becomes part of Jude's life in an important, official way. Another stands out as one of the few people Jude has ever trusted.

But they're all kind of background noise. Jude's social worker is the strongest portrayed, but while memorable, she is also one dimensional in a literary universe where everyone, even passing male acquaintances, are so carefully nuanced.

Jude's adopted mother should have a strong role to play in his life, but her name appears mostly as an afterthought. Same with Malcolm's wife, who is given a few discerning characteristics, but nothing more.

I'm not saying that A Little Life isn't a masterpiece the way it is. It's breathtaking, and by far one of the best books I've read this year. But the lack of multi-dimensional female characters is something that struck me again and again. Was this a deliberate move on the author's part? Should we make something of the fact that the author is herself a woman?

Moxie delivers the complicated, nuanced female experience, tidily in the form of Viv, who could be your everywoman in teenage form. Through Viv's eyes, we get the confusion and rage of what it feels like to be trapped in a small town where football players are unconditionally worshipped, and mandatory dress code checks parade girls in front of their classmates, then shames them for being "too provocative." Now, I can't fairly compare Viv and Jude, just because their life circumstances are just so different. Jude's childhood belongs more squarely in a horror novel than in a YA, although to be fair, I have read YA books where characters are dealing with the aftermaths of traumatic abuse.

Moxie follows the evolution of a girl who has been told over and over to suck it up. Her small town is stuck in the middle ages, and she needs to just bear it until she graduates and leaves for college. Her courage to stand up and stop "bearing it" is on a smaller scale than Jude's to keep going forward and living through the repercussions (both physical and psychological) of his horrific past. But I think it's no less moving, or timely.

Together, I think they make up the components of a perfect novel.

Have you read either, or both, of these books? What did you think?

 for A Little Life

 for Moxie