I was going to get the book, A Little Life, after a lot of people recommended it to me. My favorite genre of books are dark fiction and non-fiction books that go into the psychological plagues trauma brings upon a persons mind. I read them too to examine how an author dissects a traumatic event or events and brings the characters into those situations and how the characters progress. What always shocks me is seeing how other people react to these books. I suffered severe childhood trauma in various different ways. So reading these books is sometimes comforting, sometimes I read them with the intent to relate to a character, in the thoughts of the character towards an event that others might not have thought one would even experience. But watching some peoples reactions to books like A Little Life, and becoming nauseous or being in disbelief, I find it shocking. What are the experiences of people who read books who did not read it with intent to relate to the character. Why did you pick the book up? Im interested to see the other side of the coin. Does the emotional experiences of the characters resonate with you? Do you see any parallels within your our own life and the characters?
Stories are about conveying the journeys, life events, struggles, joys and conflicting emotions of complex characters. They don’t need to have similar experiences as me, or from the same culture or moral code as I am for me to understand what they go through and enjoy the experience.
It could be a story of a whole upside down moral system in another culture, and I’m still capable of understanding and empathizing or at least valuing the journeys they had and the interesting decisions they made under the impact of all that’s been happening to them.
That said, you don’t need to relate to every character to appreciate their journey. You just need to witness their experience and understand that it’s their journey with all its decisions, morality and emotions and value it for what it is.