I grew increasingly impatient and unsympathetic, I'm afraid. Not with Jude; but with the repeated re-visitation of Jude's woes in the narration. I guess this was a device - no doubt Jude's nightmarish life would be like that.

Yanagihara describes Jude's world in great detail and yet the other characters - including Willem remain more-or-less cyphers.

The London Times says, "Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind". Not me, I'm out of here.