A LITTLE LIFE by Hanya Yanagihara

After I finished his book, I was stunned to discover that the author is a woman.  Her focus is on four male characters who meet in college and become lifelong friends; the female characters are basically bystanders.  Two of the male characters, Willem and especially Jude, receive by far the most attention, but all four men become very successful, albeit with a few bumps along the way as they weave in and out of one other’s lives.  Jude is tortured, enigmatic, brilliant, and self-loathing to an extreme, due to an abusive childhood for which he feels so much shame that he refuses to discuss it.  The book becomes very dark about halfway through, not only because we begin to get glimpses of Jude’s past, but also because he becomes susceptible to a predatory character as an adult.  His friend JB finds himself in a very similar situation earlier in the book, and both Jude’s and JB’s lives spiral out of control, until their friends basically stage interventions in both cases.  This book is very long and very immersive, but the degree to which Jude inspires devotion from his friends and mentors is not well explained.  In other words, he does not come across as supremely lovable, and loving him requires Herculean energy.  It’s not that he is a demanding person, but his physical and emotional issues render him very high maintenance.  Overall, the other three most consequential characters are well drawn, although Malcolm gets short shrift, and Willem comes off as a saint—not a word we normally associate with an actor.  One of my favorite takeaways from this book is JB’s statement that striving for success is like running, whereas maintaining success is like running in place, which is not very satisfying nor very motivating and helps explain why so many artists fizzle later in life.