Four young men become friends during college and their lives intertwine until their last days. The book follows them through their adventures and friendship. They are very close yet separated by huge unspoken secrets. Jude, Willem, Malcolm and JB have their passions and problems, but together they make each other better people. Soon, the book zooms in on Jude's life. His life is complex and enigmatic, but his heart is pure. It is impossible for the reader not to get attached to his troublesome existence. Jude is introverted, has severe physical injuries that he does not explain to anyone, and is very cryptic about his past. Slowly, it becomes clear that his behaviours might be partially due to unresolved traumas from the past. Hanya Yanagihara alternates between flashbacks and flashforwards to slowly unravel the mystery created around Jude. With each memory or situation that brings Jude back to his past traumas, unimaginable atrocities are uncovered. Sexual abuses, prostitution, physical violence, diseases, suicidal thoughts were unfortunately considered normal by Jude until he was sixteen. Jude does not want to talk about it, but his memories haunt him like hungry hyenas. And his bright future is constantly disturbed by the growls and bites of these beasts. I suffered so much with Jude and felt very often connected to him. Because unimaginable to my eyes, I have perhaps only partly understood his sufferings and irrational refusals in front of the genuine help from his dear friends. Jude accepts the many misfortunes that keep happening to him and justify them as something from which he cannot escape. He is obtusely convinced that he does not deserve anything good because always heard that he was a sick and dirty human being, rejected by his own mother. In adult life, Jude is finally able to confide in Willem, his great trusted friend with whom he has always had a special connection. However, his life goes through the umpteenth crisis when even Willem is taken away from him. He stops actively living and keeps himself from committing suicide only for the sole purpose of not breaking a promise. Jude exists and endures for only a few years before ending his life once and for all. His last words are an apology to everyone who loved him for being the way he was and for lying about it.
This book is a masterpiece by Hanya Yanagihara on human suffering. It shows us how past unresolved traumas from young age haunt a lifetime, how demons from the past keep emerging in moments of loneliness and wear one down, and how even friends and loved ones cannot help defeat these demons. Hanya Yanagihara boldly dives into complex topics such as suicide and self-harm. She describes without hesitation how Jude feels the physical and mental need to cut himself and the feelings he experiences while doing so. She talks about Jude's complex relationship with his body, which does not respond to him and constantly betrays him, indelibly marked by bad incidents from the first fifteen years of his life. She deals with the subject of paedophilia and reports it from the perspective of a victim who is still too young and immature to process and understand what is happening to him. The characters in the story are primarily men: evil men who perpetuate abuses and good men who love and want to offer protection. Because of his terrible childhood and loss of faith in humankind, Jude struggles to distinguish one from the other and is always ready to receive the next injustice. This is a tough book that has given me a lot to think about and influenced me during those days when it kept me attached to its pages like a magnet. Did I enjoy it? I do not know. Did it affect me? Very much. The only piece of advice I can give is to read this book aware of what it is about and be ready to suffer inevitably with Jude.