RaveThe Toronto Star (CAN)There is a fatalistic thread that is anchored at the very beginning of the novel, an elegant foreshadowing that tinges everything with a sense of dread ... As the novel delves more deeply into his extraordinarily bleak back story, though, the prose takes on a confessional quality, and it becomes clear that everything is mired in such hopelessness that no matter what bright turns Jude’s life takes, no matter who loves him and how much, his downfall of long ago knows no rescue ... an extraordinary novel, an exploration of how love can restore and renew but never repair. In haunting language that both reflects the beauty of devotion and disguises the horror of total betrayal, Yanagihara has written an American tragedy for our time, a haunting plea for redemption.
