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Jude St. Francis was taught early on to expect trauma rather than love, and he now believes that he does not deserve kindness, compassion, or happiness. His main conflict in the novel is his unending fight to overcome the belief that he is unworthy of love. Jude never knew his parents, and no one can give him a definitive account of how he arrived at the monastery, so, any effort to ground Jude in friends and family makes him uncomfortable. Compounding the problem is the fact that Jude’s trust has been almost irreparably broken. When he is eight years old, Jude believes in Brother Luke’s kindness and “escapes” from the monastery with him, only to be subjected to horrific sexual abuse, which Brother Luke describes as love. As a result, Jude becomes convinced that any show of affection is transactional (in Brother Luke’s case, Jude is forced to “repay” him with sex and forced prostitution). When Harold and Jude’s friends treat Jude with kindness as an adult, Jude reacts by torturing himself, either physically cutting himself or working extremely hard to impress them. Raised by Catholics, Jude believes himself to be guilty, although of what he cannot define, leading him to suspect that his very existence might be a sin.
This conflict manifests in different ways among Jude and his friends. He recognizes that relationships require reciprocity. In college, this means sharing secrets about one’s childhood or adolescence, secrets that seem racy or daring but that are actually quite tame. The secrets are also similar among the friends, given that many people experience like processes of growing up. Jude’s experience, however, is so far beyond the pale that he cannot imagine disclosing it, and reactions to such a disclosure would likely range from pity to ostracization, either of which would destroy him. In adulthood, such reciprocity means giving and accepting acts of kindness. Jude is quite good at the former, but at the latter, he proves incapable. His decisions first to remain silent with and then to lie to his closest friends and eventual family comprise his downfall. Initially, he believes he deserves to be tortured. After much work, he finally realizes he can love and be loved. But by that time, he does not possess the tools to break his self-imposed isolation and ask for the help he needs.
His friends try to help according to their own proclivities, on full display throughout a range of personal dramas and professional accomplishments. Ultimately, the four core friends Malcolm, JB, Jude, and Willem, are flawed human beings whose relationships can sometimes be tumultuous. Gentle, timid Malcolm is often flummoxed in the face of JB’s opinionated, politicized rants. JB is selfish and prone to exploitation when it benefits his art, which Willem particularly resents as he is extremely protective of Jude. Willem’s early years caring for his disabled brother Hemming have left him with a combination of compassion and guilt that manifests as a fierce tenderness for his friend and partner. However, even after they enter a romantic relationship, Willem refuses to “come out” as gay, insisting that he simply loves Jude and that the feeling should not be taken as a sign of his sexual tendencies. Their relationship initially infuriates JB, who is proudly gay and feels slighted by Willem’s choice. JB simultaneously feels that he deserves all of the world’s love and attention and that his accomplishments fall far below those of his peers, a dichotomy that makes him behave in snobbish, manipulative, and needy ways. For a time, these traits drive a wedge between him and his friend group, leaving him vulnerable to the predatory Jackson and the narcotics with which he plies the young artist.
Reconciliation is not guaranteed, and the fact that it is accomplished represents a moral victory on behalf of all of the characters. These relationships, and those with Jude’s friends Andy and Richard, help to keep Jude anchored to this world. But the responsibilities that he takes most seriously are those he has toward Harold, Willem, and his career. Harold’s decision to adopt Jude represents a turning point that he cannot quite accept. He has family now, but he expects nothing from them, and he believes they will renege on their acceptance and love if they discover the truth about his past. He mistakenly offers Willem his body instead of his secrets. The turmoil resulting from these relationships cause Jude to both throw himself into his work and punish himself outside of it in ways that make a career practically untenable.
The conflict does not reach a climax but rather several pinnacles, one of which is Jude’s relationship with Caleb, which forces him to relive damaging, painful scenes from his childhood. The memories awakened by their relationship cause Jude to seriously attempt suicide, jolting Richard, Andy, Willem, and Harold into the realization that he is more fragile than they had thought. Another pinnacle occurs when Jude can no longer resist harming himself while maintaining a sexual relationship with Willem. When Willem realizes that Jude has intentionally burned his hand and why, the two finally learn to accept one another as flawed. They both feel that they could do more for one another, and they resolve repeatedly to do so, but then fail in the exigencies of the moment. This basic pattern comprises much of the novel and if it feels redundant it also seems realistic. The last such pinnacle would seem to be the amputation of Jude’s legs, but, despite an initial fit of resistance, he accepts the operation with surprising alacrity.
The novel’s climax is delayed until after nearly a decade of Willem and Jude’s relationship, which are related in the Happy Years. As in the other sections, time moves fluidly, generally forward, but at a variety of paces. In the same scene, one character might be at a party in the novel’s present moment while remembering a time from their college days that triggers a reflection upon either the past or the future. Large swathes of time are frequently condensed into two to three phrases, while Jude’s past takes almost the entire novel to tell. Big events, such as Willem’s rise to stardom or Malcolm’s success as an architect, are treated in cursory detail, but the author might take many pages to describe how Jude feels about deceiving a friend. Particularly in this section, Jude, Willem, and Harold increasingly reflect upon their responsibilities to one another and the ways in which they have succeeded and failed in upholding these.
They try one last time after Willem, Malcolm, and Sophie’s death when it becomes apparent that Jude is starving himself. His struggle is relayed through his clearly warped sense of time and the starvation he feels both physically and spiritually. Jude fights hard for his little life, and he achieves tremendous success in life and in love. But without the latter, he simply cannot justify the continued fight, and the conclusion at this point seems self-evident. In the novel’s coda, Harold laments their failure even as he celebrates the miracle of Jude’s existence. The sense of responsibility and the attendant desire for reconciliation propel the novel out of the slough of tragedy and into the realm of hope, which Harold narrates with nostalgia. Over time, Harold realizes that the dizzying anxiety a parent feels the night they bring an infant home from the hospital never fades. New parents are filled with wonder at the fragile life for which they are now responsible, and that responsibility is terrifying. Veteran parents like Harold understand that these feelings never fade while the child is alive. Parents have little control over their children’s choices, but they still must live with the consequences. Harold’s willingness to accept Jude as his child even after his death proves that Jude was indeed worthy of the love he craved, even if he never learned how to fully accept it.
