Four
friends who just have finished college, move to New York to build their lives:
Malcolm, a talented architect, JB, a creative artist and painter, Willem, an
aspiring actor and Jude, a brilliant lawyer. They all become stars in their
field and over the years their friendship lasts and gets closer. But they cannot fight the ghosts which haunt them
from their past. Malcolm and his difficult relationship with his father; Willem
and his handicapped brother whom he dearly loved; JB who re-constructed his
whole family history – and Jude who has to fight the hardest but cannot escape
from what he experienced, what made him the person he is: intelligent,
quick-witted, unbeatable in court. Full of self-doubt and hatred, without confidence
and desperate to suicidal at home. His self-harming behavior frequently running
out of control, the people around him can never give him all the love he
desperately needs to survive.
I have
never felt that kind of physical pain while reading a book. I have read book
about characters with heavy psychological disturbances, suicidal and prone to
harming themselves, but never have I felt their pain as deeply as I did while
reading this novel. The pain – physical and mental – the protagonist goes
through is not just narrated to be read. It creeps into you and makes you feel
what he feels. When his past is told, all the molestation he endured and
especially the psychological abuse he had to endure and which formed his image
of himself – you want to run away, leave the novel behind and hear no more of
this. But at the same time the way it is told keeps you reading on and on and
on. You always hope for a maybe not happy, but at least positive end, knowing
that life does not work in this way and that also the novel, close as it is to
a possible reality, might deny you this wish.
Hanya Yanagihara
created characters one will hardly forget. This is one of the most impressive
novels I have ever read in terms of leaving an imprint on the reader. It
portrays the best and the worst of what life has to offer.
