Hardcover, 720 pages
English language
Published Feb. 5, 2015 by Doubleday.
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.
In rich and resplendent prose, Hanya Yanagihara has fashioned a tragic …
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.
In rich and resplendent prose, Hanya Yanagihara has fashioned a tragic and transcendent hymn to brotherly love, a masterful depiction of heartbreak, and a dark examination of the tyranny of memory and the limits of human endurance. --front flap
Die ganzen Lobeshymnen und die Verheißungen, wie dieses Buch auf einen wirken soll, sind mir schleierhaft. Es hätte gewiss Potenzial gehabt, doch fand ich es trotz einiger guter Stellen über sehr, sehr weite Teile dermaßen langatmig, dass ich weder in die Handlung recht eintauchen oder eine Beziehung zu den Figuren aufbauen konnte. Ich habe irgendwann teilweise nur noch überflogen.
You need to be either sadist or masochist to endure this work without too much damage. At least 600 of the 720 pages of the book are intense descriptions of intricate sufferings. But I can tell you that you'll never look at your relationship with your significant other the same way ever again as she delves during the whole book on the relationship between the sufferer (Jude) and his friend/lover Willem. Yanagihara in her pursuit of pain is merciless and follows each ramifications to it's bitter end. A life changing work for me.
You need to be either sadist or masochist to endure this work without too much damage. At least 600 of the 720 pages of the book are intense descriptions of intricate sufferings. But I can tell you that you'll never look at your relationship with your significant other the same way ever again as she delves during the whole book on the relationship between the sufferer (Jude) and his friend/lover Willem. Yanagihara in her pursuit of pain is merciless and follows each ramifications to it's bitter end. A life changing work for me.
