This now tops the list of books that have made me cry the most (if you're curious, it goes like this: 1) A Little Life, 2) A Thousand Splendid Suns, 3) Wuthering Heights, 4) The Sunne in Splendour, 5) The Book Thief). The fact I read it mostly in trains means that I mostly cried silently, tears running down my cheeks as I held my breath and tried not to contort my face. This is maybe why I decided I'd read the last hundred pages by myself in my bed: to have the freedom to bawl my eyes out. 
 So, it bears the question, is this victim porn? I still think the answer is no. Jude St. Francis' life is fuller of disgraces than you'd believe is possible. It is, at least until he's 15, disgrace after disgrace and, after that, disgrace after happy moment. But this is not a book in where past abuse accounts for a character's actions, abuse is not a plot device, not even a plot point. Abuse is the main theme, the subject matter. It's the whole point of the book. It explores it in all its sides and consequences and effects. And none of this is superfluous, nothing is done for the sake of aesthetics or the argument. That's the difference: it's not a superficial study of abuse, it's a very detailed account of it. She goes in deep, Yanagihara, as I think you should do if you decide to talk about abuse at all. You either do it well or you don't do it. (I feel the same way about books about death and bereavement.) 
 Not only Jude. There's sadness all over the book: Willem's brother and parents and Harold's son, for starters. It is more sadness that I've ever read or contemplated in a war-free life. (I did become sceptical at certain points of Jude's past, (view spoiler)[not because I don't believe there's many men, people in general, who'd take advantage of a position of power to abuse the weaker, the less fortunate, those with no connections: I certainly buy that--I believe that people can be monsters, but--so many paedophiles? Arg (hide spoiler)]although I took it all as it came). 
 But there is also insurmountable amounts of happiness. Not all times I cried I did it from sadness, I also cried a lot (especially in Harold's chapters) from how touched I felt that love like this existed. And then, does that not say something? That someone with a life that unfortunate should also experience such happy moments? He is very very unlucky, but very lucky too--all of the people (view spoiler)[not counting died-of-awful-death-Caleb (hide spoiler)]in Jude's life after he goes to Uni are amazing human beings. 
 And detailed. Not only is the book accurate in its more sombre depictions, it is like this about everything. The film industry, law, medicine, art, even cooking and architecture and--everything! All characters are three-dimensional, have lives that go on and on even if you don't read about them. And friends go, and come, and stay, and come back. The book was not focused more in an era than another, it had the same deep focus thorough all Jude's life, and that of his friends. Only Malcom I found sometimes lacked personally. JB I loved most of all, was my favourite character (would read a book about his life--a trilogy), followed closely by Harold (What a MAN (view spoiler)[was that last chapter necessary, Hanya? Did you need to have us feel that Harold felt like he had failed in his life? I think that was a low point, tbh, we didn't needed THAT (hide spoiler)]) and Willem. What a cutie Willem is. Can I marry Willem? 
 This book will stay with me for weeks and months (like The People in the Trees did) and probably years. Even now, for some reason, when I listen to Siegfried I think of Jude. I should've been listening to something other while reading this or now I'll be sad every time Blonde plays (which is every hour of every day).