Willem’s good looks and innate talent ease his way into acting. Their early friendship is so warmly described that this vibrant part of the book is irresistible. Jude is secretive about his past, but we quickly learn of Willem that before he was “a kind man, he was a kind boy.” His disabled brother died young, and Willem will carry that memory with him as Jude grows from beautiful boy to a man who requires more and more patience and loving care. It opens at an unspecified time, when Jude and Willem are living in picturesque poverty in Chinatown, their closeness solidified by shared deprivation.

These four intend to be friends for life, and the book intends each of them to be very, very successful in his chosen field some day. B., already an ambitious artist Willem, a good-looking waiter and Jude, a mesmerizing wounded bird whom the others can’t figure out. They are Malcolm, who still lives with his rich parents J. “A Little Life” initially looks like the story of four college friends who have come to New York from their Massachusetts school and are managing to lead hermetically sealed lives together. And it is now a shortlisted contender for the Man Booker Prize, which will be awarded on Oct. A potboiler about very intense male friendship, it’s a sui generis phenomenon that became a runaway hit. It’s a big, emotional, trauma-packed read with a voluptuous prose style that wavers between the exquisite and the overdone. Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life,” published in March, turned out to be one of the most talked-about novels of the summer.

A little life book