A Little Life

College roommates find a crumbling apartment and an unbreakable bond

Four freshmen are assigned as roommates at an elite college: Jude, a mysteriously quiet young man with leg braces and an impenetrable past; Willem, a kind, handsome ranch hand's son from Wyoming; JB, a boisterous Haitian-American aspiring artist; and Malcolm, a wealthy, anxious architecture student.

College roommates find a crumbling apartment and an unbreakable bond

Four freshmen are assigned as roommates at an elite college: Jude, a mysteriously quiet young man with leg braces and an impenetrable past; Willem, a kind, handsome ranch hand's son from Wyoming; JB, a boisterous Haitian-American aspiring artist; and Malcolm, a wealthy, anxious architecture student. They become inseparable. After graduation they move to New York, where Jude and Willem share a dismal apartment on Lispenard Street—barred windows, a broken elevator, twin beds like a Victorian asylum. JB works on his art, Malcolm stagnates at a pretentious firm, Willem waits tables while auditioning, and Jude works as an assistant prosecutor. They meet biweekly at a terrible Vietnamese restaurant, splitting the bill to the dollar, their shared poverty the first currency of a friendship that will define their lives.

Willem discovers Jude writhing on a bathroom floor at midnight

The friends know almost nothing about Jude's life before college. He arrived with a single backpack containing everything he owned. He wears long sleeves in summer, flinches from touch, covers his mouth when he laughs. When they ask about his damaged legs, he claims a car injury at fifteen. JB dubs him the Postman—post-racial, post-sexual, post-identity, post-past. One night Willem wakes to find Jude's bed empty and discovers him on a bathroom floor, vomiting from spinal pain so severe he is nearly unconscious. Willem carries him back to bed and holds his clenched hand through hours of shaking. In the morning Jude begs him never to tell the others. Willem promises—and begins a lifetime of guarding secrets while wondering how much worse the truth might be.

A law professor wants answers his brilliant student will not give In law school, Jude takes a contracts class with Harold Stein, a probing, charismatic professor who becomes fascinated by his most enigmatic student. Harold makes Jude his research assistant, buys him suits for a clerkship, invites him to dinners at his Cambridge home. But every kindness doubles as an interrogation: Harold asks about Jude's parents, his childhood, his origins. Jude deflects with the skill of a born litigator. Harold's wife Julia recognizes what Harold cannot stop chasing—that Jude's silence conceals something enormous. Over years, a deep but lopsided bond forms: Harold giving freely, Jude receiving with caution that looks like distrust but is really terror. Privately, Harold resolves that whatever Jude…