In a Guardian interview some years ago, Hanya Yanagihara has this to say about Jude in A Little Life:
I wanted my character Jude to feel to the reader like a self-taught human: someone who had to study and attempt as a young adult the sensations and feelings — trust, love, anger – that are most effectively learned in childhood. One thing he’s never able to master, however, is a sense of abandon; that feeling many of us are able to realise at some point in our lives (however briefly), that our bodies are our own to inhabit and move and use however we’d wish, that they are things meant for utility, but also for pleasure.
For me, the keyword there is abandon. Why? Because my mind immediately went racing with abandonment (again, why?)—as in betrayal, shunned, forsaken. I had to read it again to realize that she means abandon in the other way: Freedom and joy—to live and dance and sing with complete abandon. Or in my case, write with complete abandon.
It’s a tough thing.
Book cover photo by Peter Huja
