I’ve been wanting to write a review of this hefty, beautiful novel for a couple of weeks now. But every time I sat down to type I just…couldn’t do it. It was like trying to remove stitches from a freshly sewn wound (I’m sorry for the imagery, but if you’ve read the novel, you’ll know it’s very apt). I was still in a bit of a daze, showing up to work and holiday events pretending to function normally while inside I was drowning in feels. I would lie awake at night fretting over the characters, only to be haunted by them in my dreams. I remember how one day I brought the book with me to Starbucks for a peaceful afternoon read, and how I ended up crying in public and desperately texting a friend to pull me back to reality. This is all to say that it has been a long, long time since a book has affected me this deeply, has so consumed my everyday life, has made me feel so simultaneously heartbroken and heart-warmed that I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore.

Quickly: A Little Life is epic. It’s the life stories of four male friends who meet in college and remain close for the rest of their lives, following the ups and downs of their careers, their friendships and their families. At the centre of this group is Jude St Francis, a character so tragic, so beautiful, but so frustrating that his demons end up haunting not only his close friends, but the reader as well. The novel is an exploration of relationships (be they friendly, romantic, or familial), and a meditation on the nature and consequences of childhood trauma. And when I say “childhood trauma” I mean childhood. Trauma. The subject matter is difficult—at times horrific—and yet I was hard pressed to put it down.

Full disclosure, I found some traumatic elements to be over the top, so outrageous in their awfulness that I was pulled out of the novel. I found myself thinking, “Oh come on.” I started wondering if maybe the author was a little bit sadistic. Well, it turns out that was the point. In an interview with The Guardian, author Hanya Yanagihara explained, “I wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror. I wanted everything turned up a little too high.” Think of it as a dark, modern fairy tale. One not concerned with morals but with the endurance of the human mind and body. The questions posed aren’t easy: is there a point of no return, wherein a person is damaged beyond help? Can you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? Should you try?

Despite its exaggerated nature, A Little Life is distinctly modern. In fact, there’s almost checklist-like modernity to it. Ethnicities run from white to black to mixed to ambiguous. Sexualities run from straight to gay to somewhere in between. Socioeconomics? They run the spectrum as well. With representation and diversity being topical issues in today’s social climate, this can only be a plus for Yanagihara. The concept of family is turned on its head; friendships are not pure but are susceptible to jealousy and breaches of trust; romantic love is not the all-healing force we want it to be; etc., etc. It’s a unique blend of contemporary culture and deliberate, gut-wrenching melodrama. It’s as devastatingly bleak as it is wistfully romantic.

I’ll leave you with a true testament to how fantastic this novel is: there is a serious, bizarre lack of female characters (I think I can remember the names of maybe two, neither of whom is important without her relation to a man) and I still would name it the best book of 2015. Trust me, that is a big deal. You’ll laugh (a little), you’ll cry (a lot), sometimes you’ll want to hurl it at the wall. But most of all, I don’t think you’ll ever forget it.