Too long a slog. Compelling but grotesque.
My sister gave it to me with a note that it was "pain porn." That's exactly right. Makes me feel dirty but can’t stop reading.
The problem seems to be that Judes afflictions are the main character. Even Jude is minor compared to them. His course of affliction is also most of the plot. Only Wilhelm's death is an action that changes people. And not much and too late for a “twist.”
Yanagihara can certainly write. But the preciousness of how precocious all the central characters are- the Manhattan gilded class - smacks of Tom Wolfe and worse. The four friends start as scrounging clueless college freshmen - and in no time are at the pinnacle of their careers: litigation lawyer, movie star, painter. Jude is memorialized in enough paintings by his painting buddy to fill a Museum of Jude.
It's an ahistorical narrative that touches up nothing that's happened in the past 30 years -- even its NYC locale seems stodgy.
I’m ANGRY at the book!
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