---
author: Hanya Yanagihara
pdate: 2015
rdate: Summer 2023
rating: 8
genre: Coming-of-age novel
---
#books #modernbook #fiction 

## Characters
JB & Jude - black (upd - idfk what race Jude is tbh)
Willem & Malcolm - white
holup Malcolm's black
alright Malcolm's kinda between black and white
JB - Jean-Baptiste (gay)

## Synopsis
### Chapter 1
#### Subchapter 1
Mostly poor people (cheap Vietnamese diner)
Jude lived at Malcolm's place, Willem at Merret's
Annika - Willem's landlady
JB's aunt - Christie, detective
JB's aunt's gf - Silvia, art enthusiast
JB's grandma - Yvette

JB - receptionist at an art place
Jude - assistant prosecutor in the criminal division of the US Attorney's Office
Malcolm - some small job, lives at his rich parent's place
Willem - works at a restaurant (wants to be a performer)
#### Subchapter 2
JB's companions in the studio: Ali, Richard, Asian Henry Young.
Ali - history of Asians in America
Henry - deconstructed statues
Richard - sculptor that worked in "ephemeral materials"
JB - lone classicist

Willem comes from a rural uncaring family
Hemming - Willem's retarded (I guess kinda, he can't speak or walk) brother
Jude takes maths easy, Willem - not so much

Willem is afraid of change (?) and is beginning to become more and more uncertain about his future
Malcolm - clerk at Ratstar Architects

Malcolm's most ashamed that he had lost his ability to "draw buildings" - imagine, create, and plan. He is but a copyist.

#### Subchapter 3
Jude's suicidal tendencies are revealed
Willem is unsure how to help Jude and whether to help at all

### Chapter 2
#### Subchapter 1
Wtf Jude lived in a monastery?
Mr Irvine - Malcolm's father
The way Jude is referred to as "he" compared to the way other characters' backstories use their name is possibly another nod at his depressing character (upd unlikely)
Harold Stein - Jude's law professor
Jude is afraid to open up to people
Jude's father - woodcutter, he had a stepmother

Jude was severely mistreated at the monastery whose monks had apparently found him near a dumpster. Brothers Pavel, Michael, Peter did try to teach him some stuff, but he regularly had spells of rage and was beaten up frequently. Possibly sexually abused by Father Gabriel.
Brother Luke seemed to be kind tho
Luke molested Jude (???) WHAT

#### Subchapter 2
Harold's first wife - Liesl
Adele - Harold's stepmother
Jacob - Harold's child, died somehow
Harold felt y'know sorrow and all that shit, but also relief from fear

#### Subchapter 3
JB's surname - Marion
Jude realises that his friends may betray him
wtf they adopted him? holy shit they did

jude's surname is actually st. francis
Jude got molested and ended up with STDs

ma fucking god jude why ye doin dis

"The hardest thing is not finding the knowledge, but believing it" - brother luke aka fucking pedo

jude overanalyses too much
jude's temporarily happy but was traumatized so much he will never trust his new parents fully

### Chapter 3
#### Subchapter 1
Willem's surname - Rangarsson
Willem's confused by societal criticisms he faces by staying true to his old friends
friendships vs couplehood
![[Pasted image 20230716191726.png]]
metaphor to Willem's reluctance to help Jude

#### Subchapter 2
Betraying morals for money without asking Harold for it because of being afraid of discovered as a fraud, a flawed person - Jude's decision to move to a firm that defends criminals
Richard Goldfarb - artist and Jude's advisee and a friend

Willem's anxiety about Jude's safety makes Jude even more afraid of his future
JB seems to purposefully evade his friends - maybe he's having some issues in life?
Malcolm wants to propose to Sophie but is having a lot of fears and doubts

#### Subchapter 3
Okay JB's doing drugs
JB's fat
JB peaked in college
JB does meth

does drugs just to assert superiority over his friends
JB blames everyone else for his failures

### Chapter 4
#### Subchapter 1
Oliver - "the nice white boy" JB had always wanted
Jude can't forgive JB cuz his impression of Jude was correct

Clara has a crush on Jude, Jude is perplexed cuz of self-hate

jude experiences societal pressure because of his loneliness and rejection of couplehood

yep jude was molested

wtf he gave some fat retard in texas a blowjob what???

jude and caleb fucked
caleb's probably a red flag tho
jude is even more confused now, wants to get back

caleb hates jude's wheelchair cause it reminds him of his parents' constant illnesses
okay caleb's a red flag: he hit jude

Harold and Jude went to have dinner, drunk Caleb provokes Harold.

Caleb sneaks into Jude's apartment and beats the everloving shit out of him, almost pushes him naked in the street, and throws him down a staircase

#### Subchapter 2
Jacob's death made Harold feel as it was a punishment for not wanting the former more passionately, he began to believe he could never be a father like his

Harold references that moment when Jude tried to confide in him about the skeletons in his closet

Jude's existence is twinned: at work and outside, who he was and who he had been, etc

later Jude apparently told Harold and Julia what had happened to him, then some other incident happened, possibly involving Caleb Porter

in this subchapter the narrator, Harold, is apparently talking to Willem

#### Subchapter 3
Brother Luke slowly befriended Jude in order to take advantage of him. Luke's clearly manipulating Jude

caleb's beating of jude made him less stable and released the previously sealed memories of his past

damn jude's getting even more fucked up, willem's spell at his place helped a little, then it got even worse

jude wanted to commit suicide by cutting himself one day, he viewed that as the only option to finally rest and thought his loved ones would see that as an apology, since Jude, according to himself, was but a time thief

Luke cut Jude's hair, shaved his own beard, and changed both of their clothes in order to be less recognizable. They then drove to Texas.

holy fucking shit luke was first a maths professor, then a 6th grade teacher cause he "wanted to work with children"

Luke was getting money by making Jude have sex with pedophiles

Jude survived his suicide attempt

Jude still doesn't fucking want to talk to a therapist

after readjusting to normal life following his suicide attempt, all the "hyenas" - his past memories - returned

Jude finally agreed to tell Willem about his traumas
Luke kept making Jude have sex with pedos for years without end

one day the police knocked down on Luke and Jude's room while the former was molesting Jude, Luke went to the bathroom and hung himself (get fucked cunt)

jude was then transferred to a orphanage, and abused even there.

jude's suffering an extreme case of sort-of stockholm syndrome: he knows Luke abused him, yet wants to believe Luke actually did love him

### Chapter 5
#### Subchapter 1
At some point Willem just recognised that "hey, I'm famous" - perhaps an allegory to growing up?
Jude both returned to his pre-suicide attempt state and also changed
Jude was practically Willem's only friend who recognised him as such, not as an actor

Willem may have begun convincing himself that he was romantically attracted to Jude out of sheer sadness for the latter's loneliness
Jude likes Chekhov's works
Willem decides to ask Jude out

GET FUCKED CALEB - he died of pancreatic cancer

Jude and Willem are now a couple, tho Jude still is a little hesitant

Kit - Willem's agent
Willem learns of Jude's relationship with Caleb
Jude's unwillingness to move on, to efface the memories of his past leaves him befuddled
Kit's gay

Willem came out regarding his relationship with Jude, but soon began questioning whether that was the right decision (possible unforeseen consequences for his career and for Jude himself)
Willem was afraid that he was being too much like Caleb

#### Subchapter 2
Within two weeks of Willem's departure for work, Jude'd had a lot of his older health problems resurface
Even after having established a working relationship with Willem, Jude still doesn't like having sex and is repulsed by the act - holy shit the guy's so based yet he can't realise that
Jude doesn't have the stomach to tell Willem he hates the experience tho
Jude believes that his cutting is a way of "cleansing"

Willem caught Jude in the act of cutting himself, and, to prove his point that it is dangerous, cut his own chest six times
As an alternative to cutting, Willem suggested that Jude wakes him up whenever he feels the urge to cut himself

Willem and Jude decided to ask Malcolm to build them a house, they chose a 70 acre territory with a forest and a lake
The forest reminds Jude of Brother Luke's assurances

Jude finds solace in the fact that at Rosen Pritchard, there was no room for Brother Luke, Caleb, etc, as all these details were irrelevant to his corporate masters

Memories from Jude's earlier life began resurfacing in his first year of law school - he thought of these thoughts as defiant, not letting him let go of them

Dr. Traylor died in prison when Jude was in college

Now the hyenas don't chase Jude, they have surrounded him since Caleb's beatings
Jude at the same time likes when Willem's shooting somewhere far away due to his aversion to sex, yet also hates it due to the ever-increasing desire to cut himself in Willem's absence
At one point Jude even wanted to jump into the same staircase Caleb had pushed him into as an alternative to cutting himself, but regains control over himself. Instead, Jude decides not to cut himself, but to have "a cooking accident" and burn himself a little
Except he burns himself too much, and Andy, whom he visits the next day, can see through Jude's lies and confornts him, calling his behaviour "sick" and "crazy"

Willem is clearly happy about the small pleasures of being in a relationship (possibly this shows how his views have changed (see couplehood vs friendship))
Willem views his relationship with Jude as something sacred, something personal and not for the public
Willem subconsciously understands that Jude feels disgusted when it comes to sex
Willem believes that all of them (He, JB, Malcolm, Harold) are in reality cowards, unwilling to dig deep enough to uncover Jude's past, and yet he believes that with stubborness, he could get Jude to confide in him about his issues

Willem accidentally answered Andy's call to Jude, thus learning about the true nature of Jude's burn. He screams at Jude and almost hits him. They drive to Harold and Julia for Thanksgiving.
Jude cuts himself on that night and Willem catches him in the process, they exchange insults. They both leave Harold and Julia the next day early.

That incident shows Willem that he has to stop pretending that the world will align itself to his vision of it: that jude will get better because he wants him to. In reality, he's a prisoner: of his job, of his relationship, and of his naivete.
He calls Andy, and, following his advice, rushes home to reconcile with Jude
Jude finally decides to tell Willem the full story of his childhood
At this point, Jude is almost certain Willem will leave

During Jude's stay in the orphanage, he was sexually abused by the counselors
One day after his lessons at a community college, he was to be escorted back by the cruelest of counselors, and decided to hide, and then run. He was found 2 hours after and harshly punished for that.
![[Pasted image 20230818142816.png]]
After Jude saw the result of the beating, he began to think of himself as a grotesque cripple

idk why but the scene where Jude runs about on the fields reminds me of [[The Catcher in the Rye]] for some reason

Jude stole the clothing and wallet of one of the counselors who had had sex with him after the process, and ran away
He hitchiked to Boston (having sex with truckers in the process), but stopped at a gas station near Philadelphia - he was sick from STD and had a fever
He decided to rest, but woke up in a car, then in a house. The man who had "rescued him" was Dr. Traylor

Dr. Traylor gave him enough antibiotics to treat his diseases, then one day strolled into the basement he kept Jude with a bat, and threatened to kill him if he tries to resist him. He then he molested Jude

After some time Jude attempted to escape, but couldn't, since Dr. Traylor's house was located far away from any civilisation
At one point Dr. Traylor made the malnourished Jude run away while the former chased him in his car. Eventually, Jude collapsed and was run over. Then, Dr. Traylor was somehow arrested, and Jude ended up in the hospital where'd met Ana

Jude never knew how he ended up so lucky

#### Subchapter 3
Willem's been cheating (sort of?) on Jude with a woman named Claudine due to Jude's aversion to sex
Jude doesn't want Willem to admire him
8 months after Jude's confession, things appear to have actually got better
Willem realised that Jude's lying and his own self-deceptions were forms of self-protection
Willem switched from trying to make Jude better but to make Jude less sick

Willem occasionally returned to his "pretending" - after all, his and Jude's lives were almost miracles, so why can't more of such miracles occur?
The last time in Jude's life when he could truly walk on his own was his and Willem's Christmas vacation, when Jude was 46.

Slowly but steadily Jude's condition worsens

holup wdym Julia Altman and Harold Stein? the fuck? did they file for divorce?
not really I guess
Jude believes that he could make Willem "sick" and so keeps out of the public
He's also afraid someone who had known him in his childhood would try to blackmail him

at one point Jude had to be hospitalized due to fatigue and fever, his condition is getting worse. The cause of that is osteomyelitis (bone infection)

Jude still jokes about his condition
They (Jude and Willem) absolutely love their countryside house

Harold and Julia, together with Willem and Jude, stayed at their forest home, where, during a walk with Harold, Jude fell to the ground and began vomiting. His condition keeps getting worse

Jude's problems come to a head when Andy recommends amputation
After some consideration, Jude finally agrees to getting his legs amputated

In one of his nightmares, Jude experiences a sort of an existential crisis where he questions who he is, and his questions are answered by a sort of "phantom" of Willem, who tells him who he is and what qualities he has

Willem starts to lose hope in the prospects of Jude's recovery, but then it blossoms again

Thanksgiving - sort of fulcrum
Jude was fitted with prostheses and became physically healthier

Jude has always wanted to walk the medieval pilgrimage route that goes through Spain, and Willem will star in a movie that will have him walk through some sections of it
After Willem had finished filming, Jude negotiated with one of his former legal clients - whose godfather was the spanish minister of culture - and received the right to stay at the Alhambra for 3 hours alone

![[Pasted image 20230819193802.png]]

WHAT THE FUCK?
Willem takes Sophie and Malcolm for a ride towards their home, but gets hit by truck on the way there and DIES(?)
holy shit it was all so good and pleasant and then this

### Chapter 6
#### Subchapter 1
Okay Willem did die
Sophie was fucking obliterated and Malcolm was brain dead for a while - and then his parents had his organs donated

To cope with Willem's loss, Jude for some time pretended that Willem was actually just away on a shoot
Jude sued the fuck out of everyone directly or indirectly responsible for Willem's death

Jude is again considering suicide - nobody will blame him for it - but still he doesn't do it, for some reason

Jude contemplates his dedication to Rosen Pritchard and wishes he had spent that time with Willem

With each chapter, the passage of time in the novel speeds up

#### Subchapter 2
Lucien, Jude's mentor at Rosen Pritchard, has suffered a stroke and hit his head, leaving the memories of the 20 past years void
[[Mortality]], blah blah blah this theme

Jude is still trying to cope with Willem's loss and move on

Jude realises that [[People don't change|people don't change]]
Jude feels like he's trapping himself mentally

JB invites Jude to see a full collection of all his works - and in the process Jude relives his - and his friends - lives
JB tries to kiss Jude after the latter had seen some important painting, and Jude almost faint and practically escapes JB

#### Subchapter 3
At one point Jude just decided he's no longer interested in eating, so he doesn't eat often
Jude's condition is rapidly deteriorating
He dreams of V I O L E N C E and begins having hallucinations of Willem
Jude is slowly destroying his social contacts

Jude again decides to commit suicide - but in a funny way - he'll starve himself so much he'd become too weak to live and die in an accident
Jude's been told by his friends he needs to live, but he doesn't know why he needs to live

Jude is forcibly taken to the hospital, he is baffled than no one remembers how much he needs Willem to live
Jude is ultra mega fucking angry
Somehow, Jude thinks that if he tries to pretend he's normal one final time it's fix things

### Chapter 7
Harold (?) begins the narration, talking about a vacation in Rome "on the second anniversary of your (Willem's?) death"
Harold talks about the seemingly improving Jude's state, mentioning how without Jude, he wouldn't live, but just survive, as his life would instantly become dull
Jude just doesn't want to live anymore
Harold realises his attempts to make Jude stay alive are futile
Jude what the fuck
He injected air into an artery and gave himself a stroke
Andy - dead 3 yrs after Jude
Richard - dead 5 yrs after Jude

Only JB is left now

Ironically, the one who I thought would die the first, lived through the entire book


## Conclusion, themes, and criticism
1. A lot of unnecessary characters
2. Midlife crisis lol
3. I am afraid of death and aging apparently
4. good plot
5. good character development BUT sometimes they're too edgy for their own good and it's hard suspend the disbelief 
6. tiny details
7. social commentary on many topics
8. almost got me at when he collapsed in the forest and vomited + dear comrade
9. weird take on mental health - if you suffered trauma, you can't fix yourselfI 