Yanagihara’s rendering of Jude’s abuse never feels excessive or sensationalist. It is not included for shock value or titillation, as is sometimes the case in works of horror or crime fiction. Jude’s suffering is so extensively documented because it is the foundation of his character.

For the first fifty or so pages, as the characters attend parties, find apartments, go on dates, gossip, and squabble with each other, it is easy for the reader to think he knows what he’s getting into: the latest example of the postgraduate New York ensemble novel, a genre with many distinguished forbears, Mary McCarthy’s “The Group” and Claire Messud’s “The Emperor’s Children” among them.

As the pages turn, the ensemble recedes and Jude comes to the fore. And with Jude at its center, “A Little Life” becomes a surprisingly subversive novel—one that uses the middle-class trappings of naturalistic fiction to deliver an unsettling meditation on sexual abuse, suffering, and the difficulties of recovery.

In this godless world, friendship is the only solace available to any of us.

Like the axiom of equality, “A Little Life” feels elemental, irreducible—and, dark and disturbing though it is, there is beauty in it.

I feel like it’s actually in an idealized future because of the fluidity of their sexual path as well, especially with Willem. [Editor’s note: At the start of the novel, Willem dates women and later is in a romantic relationship with Jude.] There’s a certain flow to it where it’s less judged. The references are all dealt with in a very casual way, which is natural and how I’ve always felt about my own sexuality. I really related to that part on a personal level because, although it felt idealized, it also felt like the way that I see things.

When I was struggling with my family, I had a very complicated relationship with them, I was with a woman who was very maternal, who took care of me and taught me that family was what you made of it, that it was logical vs. biological. When I started exploring my own vanity and going to the gym and working out and paying attention to my body, it was when I started dating a guy and seeing a naked man for the first time, and that comparison and this brotherhood … it all happened exactly when it was supposed to happen. And then when I didn’t feel like I was really being myself and I didn’t know the type of gay man I wanted to be, I went out and dated women again.